m 





->' ''*, 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



TTT 



Shelf.S.S3 



UNITED STATES OF AMEKICA. 



■.^- 



The Soul: 



ns 



NATURE. RELATIONS, AND EXPRESSIONS 



IN 



HUMAN EMBODIMENTS 



n 



GIVEN THROUGH --f-( 1 

MRS. CORA L V^RICHMOND, 



BY HER GUIDES. 



/C\»"j 



L ^EC 11 ,888 V '' 



chicago, ill. 

The Spiritual Publishing Co. 

1887. 






"P^^ 



Copyriglit, 1888, 
By Mrs. C. L. V. Richmond. 






M 



SALUTATION. 



To THE Beloved Members op our classes ix America axd Exglaxd, 

AVHEREVER THEY MAY BE, WHO HAVE RECEIVED THESE TEACH- 
INGS, SOME OF THE FIRST-FRUITS OF THE KINGDOM 
OF THE soul; and TO THOSE WHO, NOT 
HAVING BEEN PRESENT IN BODY, 
WERE ONE IN SPIRIT 
WITH THE 
TRUTHS HEREIN EXPRESSED, 
THIS RECORD OF THEIR 
LESSONS 
' IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED 

BY THE 

GUIDES. 



TO THE READER. 



These lessons are published primarily, as a book of reference for 
those who have been members of the classes receiving them. The es- 
sential teachings herein contained, have been given at various times 
and places through this same medium for the past twenty years, but 
always heretofore verbally, in private or semi-private classes, because 
it was necessary that those listening to them should continue through 
the entire course. A great demand, however, has recently sprung up 
in the public mind for some concise presentation of the teachings as 
herein expressed. This volume is a careful compilation from verba- 
tim reports of several courses of lessons, each containing the essential 
fundamental bases of the Teachings, but varying in manner of presen- 
tation and illustration. 

It has been thought best by the Intelligences who have given 
them, to preserve the form in which the Teachings were always given, 
i. e. : that of lessons, to enable those Avho read to become en rapport 
with the Guides in somewhat the same manner as though they had 
listened to the utterances as pupils. There must always remain, how- 
ever, a sense of loss; a missing of the revealed presence, through the 
medium; of the Controlling Guides, made more palpable by the Invo- 
cations that preceded the lessons and the Benedictions at the close; 
and most palpable by the pervading devotion and exaltation of all 
present. 

Yet, happily, those who read with the "Spirit and the Understand- 
ing," shall feel themselves none the less near to the Guides, and ever 
m.ore near unto the Divine. 



THE GENERAL SUJECT OF THE LESSOXS, IS: 
The Soul; its nature, relations, and expressions in material 

rORM. 

The First lesson will be: 

The Soul; its relation to God. 

The Second lesson will be: 

The Dual Nature of the Soul. 

The Third lesson will be: 

The Expression of the Soul in Human 
Embodiments, and its relation to other Souls. 

The Forth lesson will be a continuation of the third, as we find 
that subject most attractive to human minds that bears directly upon 
existence and its relations. 

The Fifth lesson will be: 

The Re-united Soul; including Perfected 
Souls, Parental Souls, and Angels. 

The Sixth lesson will be: 

Angels, Archangels, and Messiahs; in- 
cluding life on other planets. 



DEFINITIONS. 



GIYEX BY THE GUIDES. 



(Explaining the particular sense in which the following words are used in 
in this series of lessons.) 

INFINIVERSE. That which relates to the Infinite Being; the 
Uncreate; the realm of Infinity. 

UXIYERSE. That which relates to Existence; the whole of 
Creation. 

BEING. That Avhich is absolute, unchanging, essence instead of 
substance. 

EXISTENCE. That which is created; changeful, movable, vari- 
able; limitation, environment. 

IMPULSION". The act of volition of the Infinite or finite entities 
toward expression; undoubtedly the Divine Jjogos. 

EXPRESSION. Existence; revealed througli matter; made 
known in time, and space, and sense. 

INVOLUTION, The process of expression of the Soul through 
matter; becoming involved in time and sense. 

EMBODIMENT. The expression of the Soul in the personal 
human form. 

Embodiments. Successive expressions of the Soul in human 
forms. 

SPIRIT. The inbreathing of the Soul, (from spirare to breathe, ) 
i. e., the theme of the Soul in one human life. 

MIND. The Consciousness of the Soul acting through Spirit up- 
on the human organism, producing the process of thought; the most 
external expression of Soul. 

(The Mind also has a reflex action and is the only expression of the con- 
sciousness affected by material things.) 



PREPAEATOEY ADDEESS TO THE CLASS. 



Beloved ones: It is needful, in approaching the Altar of Truth, 
that you cast aside all preconceived conclusions concerning the themes 
to which you are to address your attention. We ask you, in listen- 
ing to that which will be expressed, that you approach the subject as 
•children willing to be taught, that you receive the teachings with the 
same impartiality as though you had no fixed opinions on the subjects 
to be considered, and that you enter into the spirit of what is given 
Avithout reference as to whether it conflicts with previous teachings 
that you have received or not. You are to endeavor to receive the 
ideas given, the thoughts presented, the Truths sought to be conveyed, 
as though your minds were snowy tablets upon which is to be written, 
for the first time, the Word of God. If, after placing yourselves in 
this condition, you shall find that the thoughts here expressed cannot 
be accepted as Truth, it is your province to reject them. This is not a 
place nor time for arguments, but statements; we are willing to ex- 
l^lain the propositions that are given, but we are not willing to discuss 
them. Any system of teaching can afford to wait, if it be Truth, un- 
til the mind is ready to receive it; no amount of discussion will ever 
enable one to be prepared who is not ready to percewe Truth. 

The subjects to be treated are profound, have engaged the atten- 
tion of many inspired, and many thoughtful, minds since thought be- 
gan on earth. It will not be found strange if in a series of lessons, 
necessarily brief and condensed, there shall be many points that can- 
not, perhaps, be solved, but as the germ is placed within the sod and 
time is required for growth, so we plant these Truths as seeds given to 
us from the higher states of Celestial Being, trusting to the future for 
their germination, growth, and fructification in your lives. 

Beloved ones: Even as children turn to a kindly parent, or as you 
might turn to one appointed to bring glad tidings, so we would invite 
your attention to this series of lessons concerning themes Divine. 



FIRST LESSOK 



THE SOUL; ITS RELATION TO GOD. 



The Infinite cannot be comprehended, but can be conceived of 
through perception; as it is possible for one to conceive that there is 
a state of perfect happiness, but no one on earth has ever yet experi- 
enced it; as it is possible for one to conceive of perfect Truth, yet no 
man should claim to have received it, so a conception of the Infinite 
is the inherent conception of man derived from the Soul, which is the 
source, is being, is like God; and this conception can no more be de- 
stroyed than the light of day can be destroyed by an intervening cloud, 
or than chaos can destroy the continued harmony of the universe. 

It is often said that an Infinite Deity is inconceivable. An Infi- 
nite Deity is incomprehensible we admit, but not inconceivable. The 
mind may conceive of that which cannot be comprehended. All that 
relates to Eternity is not comprehended except in Eternity; but you do 
conceive both of the heretofore and the hereafter while in your pres- 
ent state. The conceptions of the mind are prophecies, and the com- 
preliensions of the mind are limitations. 

Existence suggests Being. The Creation proves the Creator. 
Primal Law implies the Ziaio Maker ^ the Source of Law. The Un- 
iverse declares the Infiniverse. 

The Infiniverse is God; which is a possible statement, but which 
cannot be comprehended in the universe ( of things. ) You may state 
a million but no one has a literal experience as to what a million, tak- 
en in units, may mean. Through mathematics you conceive of aggre- 
gate numbers which you have no comprehension of in their several 
parts, and it is just as possible to conceive of that which you cannot 
comprehend in regard to Deity as in regard to mathematics. The 
only way to secure mathematical accuracy in any problem is that you 
knoAv the bases are correct, therefore the results must be so. Deity 
is as much a possible conception as any conception by the mind of 
man. 



10 THE SOUL; 

God is the infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, eternal, entity. 

The One Supreme Intelligence; under Avhatever name this is 
breathed: whether that mystical and sacred Name which never has 
been pronounced, which belonged to Egypt, but which under the name 
Jehovah was brought into the Hebraic religion; the incommunicable, 
unspeakable name I H TJ II; the Jesod; the Joel, He, Vau, He; the 
ieoiia; or whether syllabled in the* Ha, the Om, of the Ancients; the 
Tetragrammatoyi. Osiris was not the physical sun but a symbol from 
an Angel to express the Deity and His relation to man, the Sun of the 
Soul; the Light; the luminous power of Intelligence, personified in the 
Infinite. 

Whatever be tne title or designation of that Infinite Being, God 
is only known within the Soul, and only understood in its innermost 
and divinest conception; this is what we mean by the name God. 
There can be no other Infinite; there can be no other Omniscient,, 
Omnipresent, Infinite Being; the Deity. 

Many people say they cannot understand an Infinite Personality. 
Neither can you understand a Isirger fi7iite personality, nor an illimita- 
ble universe; but God is Infinite Being ; and the Soul is also Being. 
As science declares the universe from the atom, we declare God and 
the Soul from eternity. 

Human knowledge proceeds from the relatively know^n to the un- 
known. Revelation proceeds from the unknown, the ahsolute, to the 
known; from the boundless, limitless, to the limited, the relative, the 
enchained. All knowledge of the Spiritual is a priori knowledge. 
The realm of God and the Soul is possession; the realm of creation 
is expression. The Supreme Consciousness of the universe is God, the 
supreme consciousness of man is the Soul. These make up the con- 
sciousness of the universe. 

This Infinite Consciousness, or Love, is All-potent, Omniscient, 
Eternal, Omnipresent, and is the prototype for the Soul, absolutely 
and perfectly. 

The Infinite is Omniscientj Omnipresent, and Eternal; the Soul 
is finite and eternal, but not omnipresent, not omniscient, not infi- 
nite. God is the Infinite Being of eternity. The Soul is the only 
entity excepting God, and has its being in eternity, but has its exist- 
ence and expression in the universe. The Soul exists in and has to do 
with the universe, but God alone is the Infiniverse; the Soul has to do 
with all kinds of expressions in time and eternity, but they must be 
subject to limitations, while God is All in All now and forevermore. 

That which is without beginning or ending would illustrate the 
Soul, as a complete circle; while a globe would illustrate the Infinite, 
which is more than a wheel, which is illustrated by a sphere of wheels. 



ITS RELATION TO GOD. 11 

The eternal circle of the existence of the Soul is: in that which has 
been, that which is, and that which will be, but limited in scope. The 
Infinite Sphere is; all that has been, all that is, and all that will be. 

The Soul is an eternal, immortal, finite entity. 

The Soul is related to God as the finite to the Infinite, the re- 
semblance being in quality but not in scope; to use an illustration, 
which is not to be taken literally but relatively, the quality of the drop 
of water is the same as the quality of water in the whole ocean, but 
the globule or drop will never become the ocean, even though it seems 
to be lost in the ocean its entity as a globule is the same; or as you 
are encompassed by the walls of this room and pervaded by its atmo- 
sphere, but you are neither the room nor the atmosphere, nor are you 
composed of parts of the room or atmosphere, nor are you a part of 
either. To further illustrate or compare the quality of the Soul with 
the quality of the Infinite, we would compare the single ray of light 
with the whole of the rays of light that emanate from a sun or solar 
center, but you must not make the mistake of supposing that we mean, 
therefore, that the Infinite is composed of the whole number of finite 
Souls, for then the Infinite would be limited to the number of Souls in 
the universe, but such is not the case, the Soul has its being within the 
Infinite, but is not the Infinite. The finite and the Infinite are not in- 
terchangeable, therefore the Soul never becomes Infinite, nor is it lost 
in the Infinite, nor does the Infinite ever become finite; that would 
imply limitation. 

With these definitions you are prepared to know, as the Soul 
bears always the same relation to the Infinite, as it is immortal and in 
eternity, there is no beginning to, nor can there be any cessation of, 
its being. It is uncreate as God is; but as the Soul is finite its being 
must forever be encompassed by the Infinite. The power of under- 
standing this relation is innate in the Soul of man, no other basis is 
possible; when you endeavor to consider Deity by any other method 
except that whicTi belongs to the Soul, there is failure. It is from 
the Soul that there is the first perception and conception of God, that 
there is recognition of God, and that there is satisfaction with the con- 
sciousness of the presence of God. 

These statements, concerning the Infinite and finite, must be 
borne in mind through this entire series of lessons: the Soul never 
changes places with the Infinite; the Soul is never nearer the Infinite; 
the Soul is not remote from the Infinite. 

The Soul in quality is like unto God. 

When Christ said: "Be ye perfect even as your Father in Heaven 
is perfect," it was because that perfection is possible, the quality being 



12 THE SOUL; 

the same. One beam of pure white light is precisely as perfect in 
quality as the whole white light of the sun's rays; and, as the white 
light, the Soul in its essential nature, is always pure. The perfectness 
of God is the perfectness of the Soul. 

The quality of the truth is the same in the Soul as in God; 
you may not have Infinite truth, but you may have the clear whiteness 
of truth, and when tested by all the powers of the Soul, the qualit}' 
of that light is like the Light of Deity. Perfection is quality not 
quantity. If an artist says, that is a perfect picture, he means the 
tones, tints, and coloring form harmony, are all perfect as related to 
the whole, no parts are imperfect. If a musician says, that musical 
composition is perfect, he means in all that relates to harmony, in all 
that relates to the theme, in the adjustment of sound and the associa- 
tion of ideas, the composition is perfect. 

As God is Infinite in love, the Soul has love in a finite degree. 
As God is Infinite in w^isdom, that attribute is found in the Soul in a 
finite degree but perfect in quality. As God is Infinite in knowledge, 
then knowledge is found in the Soul in a finite degree. As you may 
see reflected in the drop of dew the whole starry firmament, so in the 
Soul, in a miniature degree, are all the qualities of Deity. "Be ye 
perfect" is at once ^ Divine command and prophecy. 

No sun or planet is so remote from the central sun that the small- 
est vibration does not reach that most distant planet; so there is no ex- 
istence nor expression of life so alienated from God's love, that His 
love does not include the whole, pervade the whole, and reach to the 
uttermost. As the most central sun t)f which the mind can conceive 
is the light of all other suns and systems moving around it, so, in the 
Infinite, 

God's Love is the Light of all Souls. 

Or to transpose, the foregoing: as light is the cause of life in mat- 
ter, and the light of the sun is the manifestation of the method of all 
generic being in solar systems through motion; so Love in the Divine 
Consciousness, is the light of the Soul, and whatever relates to the 
Soul is governed by this Infinite Love, as whatever relates to matter 
is governed by light. 

The state of the Soul is now what we are considering; this divine 
unit, or entity, being uncreate, there are no new Souls added to the 
universe, and there are no Souls taken from the universe. All Souls 
being in existence forever there can be no change as regards their be- 
ing, their relation to other Souls, the number of them, nor can what 
constitute the usual conditions of time, and space, and sense, affect 
them or their relation to the Deity. There is no time, nor space, nor 



ITS RELATION TO GOD. 13 

matter in the Infinite, because time, and space, and matter, are rela- 
tive; the Soul in its pure and primal nature has nothing to do with 
time, nor space, nor matter, but only with eternity and that which be- 
longs to eternity. Whatever shall hereinafter be expressed concerning \ i 

what the Soul does must not be mistaken for what the Soul is. ^ ] 

The Soul is a revelation unto outward nature. No external thing 
can reveal God. The Soul alone being of the nature of God perceives 
God. Nothing can teach that there is God. All things may illustrate 
it; teaching comes from knowledge, possession; and that which recog- 
nizes God is from the Soul. As consciousness is in the Soul, so every 
attribute expressed by consciousness is in the Soul. As you must go 
to the Soul for the source of all intelligence, so you must go to the Soul 
ultimately for all that promises expression. 

Herein we deal with the Soul in its absoluteness. We are not deal- 
ing with time and space and sense at all now. We have not yet arrived 
at matter. If it is impossible for you to think of the Soul thus, do not 
try to think, simply ^^erceu'e/ for not all that is thinkable is true; that 
is most true which you cannot speak nor think, but can percewe. 

Soul alone can perceive Soul; it is to that nature that all these re- 
marks are addressed, the Soul that does understand, the life within that 
does perceive, the love, wisdom, and truth that do acknowledge; and 
these, in every human mind capable of receiving these utterances, must 
have some acknowledged power in some portion of your being. 

Bear in mind that that which is meant by the innermost, the most 
sacred, the Holy of Holies, as revealed in the ancient letter through 
the Egyptian lore, was no outward place: not even the outward 
symbol of the sphere, nor the double triangle, which is the Egyp- 
tian, Masonic, and Kabalistic symbol of God, the points of which 
solve the problems of the universe, were literal, but the innermost 
state or condition which, when perceived, must form the conscious- 
ness in human life of the presence of God. Whatever be the name of 
that state of which we have spoken, like the real name of God, it has 
never been syllabled on earth, but it is enough to know that the Soul 
of man is the innermost consciousness of the individual life, and that 
which the finite entity expresses and is revealed in the life of the 
Angel will hereafter be made known. 

RECAPITULATION. 

You are to make your starting point from within the Soul, from the 
Deity, whatever else is said you will not be allowed to deviate from 
that Divine Center. As in the Middle Ages no astronomy could be 
correct because the earth was made the center instead of the sun, so 



14 THE SOUL; 

whomsoever shall endeavor to follow these lessons should first perceive 
the Deity as the Infinite Center, the Soul of life. By the individual the 
center of the universe must be transferred from time and sense to eterni- 
ty, to that which is absolute, to conceptions which in themselves relate 
to eternity; and the Soul, in its absolute nature, must be continually 
before the mind. In all that relates to the Soul and Deity there is 
no past time, as you term it, nor any future, there is but eternity, 
there is no change in the relation of the Soul and God. Xo Soul 
ever goes astray, no Soul is ever "lost," no Soul is shadowed, no Soul is 
darkened, it is impossible for the Soul, in its divine and essential qual- 
ity, ever to be alienated, or estranged, or in any way shut out from 
God's Omniscient, Omnipresent Love. This being understood as the 
basis, whatever shadows may be referred to hereafter, in this series of 
lessons, will not relate to the Soul or God, but will relate to conditions 
which will be explained. 

Primarily then you are anchored in the center oi all possible con- 
ception of intelligence which is God, in the circumference of all pos- 
sible intelligence which is God, in the Infiniverse which is God. (In 
contradistinction to the universe w^hich is the manifestation of God. ) 
You are anchored in the immortality of the Soul, the eternity of its 
absolute nature, in its unchangeableness, in that which forever w^as, for- 
ever wdll be, and is forever the same; in the truth that the qualities of 
the life of the Soul are like the qualities of God in a finite degree; 
you are anchored in the great certainty of Infinite Love which is 
the all-potent and Central Sun, illumines every Soul, forever inspires, 
guides and directs. 

/" The individual expression of the Soul is under the government of 
/ the individual Soul, but the whole life of the universe is under the 
/ government of the Soul of the universe, God. What the Soul shall 
\ express belongs to its individual choice and its individual life under 
God, but what the universe shall express belongs to the Will of the 
Infinite, or the Infiniverse. This sphere within a sphere, or light 
wdthin a light, is the state within the Soul, the chosen light being 
the Infinite Light, and the manifestation of that chosen light being 
the life of the Soul. As confidently may you turn to that Soul as the 
source of all possibilities, as unto the sun the atom turns as the source 
of all light. No more can you be excluded from the Divine Source of 
all ^possibilities than can the atom, how^soever shadowed by organic 
conditions, be excluded from the vibrations of light, which give expres- 
sion to its outward being. 

Being thus centered in the Absolute, the premises perfect, the con- 
ditions so beyond time and sense, you are requested to receive these 
propositions as a student would receive propositions in mathematics, 



ITS BEL ATI ON TO GOB. 15 

knowing tliey are to be proved in their application. If they are not 
proved, each proposition being perfect in itself, containing its own 
proof, and all being perfect in parts, then the system must fall; if they 
are truth, each proposition based upon them will have been proved at 
the conclusion; then the system must be true. If, resembling the high- 
er problems of mathematics; those of geometry; the Pythagorean 
Proposition, these teachings, being the solution of all the divine 
potentialities of the universe, are not fully explained and carried 
out in this system, reject it; but remember the bases of the system, 
do not depart from them, nor bend them to any system more imj^er- 
fect for they will fail you utterly if you do. 

Beginning, therefore, with the Absolute, the Infinite, the Divine; 
beginning with the Infinite Entity and the finite entity, you are re- 
quested to accompany us forward, in each succeeding lesson, with, 
such lines of thought as shall ultimately solve to your minds the prob- 
lems of the universe, or if they do not prove to your minds that the 
problems are soluble, then the world must seem to be stranded upon 
the shore of the sea of doubt and of degradation, from which there is 
no escape. 

Necessarily, beloved ones, this lesson is brief because of its mag- 
nitude. We might have added more sentences, still they would mean 
no more; when we draw nearer to your outward expression there will 
be greater length of discourse. 



SECOND LESSON. 



THE DUAL NATURE OF GOD AND THE SOUL; 



AND THE IMPULSION TOWARD EXPRESSION. 

We shall use the word, Expression, in the sense that we have de- 
fined it: as being the result of the impulsion or volition from the 
Soul toward activity. The word Impulsion meaning the act of vo- 
lition. 

The lesson which you have previously considered treats of God as 
the One, the Eternal, Infinite Entity, and the Soul as an eternal, finite 
entity. 

The first sxpressiox of God is Dual. 

Whenever and wherever expression begins the Dual Life is mani- 
fest. The universe of matter does not exist excepting through this 
expression of Dual Life. 

All ancient religions symbolized the Infinite in the Unknown 
yet Perfect Sphere of Omniscience; yet all ancient religions consid- 
ered the first expression of Deity as twofold. The terms Divine Ma- 
ternity, and the Great Mother Nature, are synonymous with the femi- 
nine name of the Deity. The earth is made the symbol of the Di- 
vine Mother. In all religions, either veiled or openly, there is the 
feminine Deity, co-equal in Power, perfect in Love, half of the Dual 
life of the Deity. 

The great Mahadai, or God-Goddess of the most remote an- 
tiquity, was a Dual Divinity, without earthly name or human form, 
but abiding forever as the Twofold Source of Being. So well was 
this understood that all the primary religions of the world re- 
vealed God as twofold. God is expressed and revealed according to 
the need; and as the universe, including that which man shares, needs 
this expression, so the dual life is revealed. 



IT^ DUAL NATURE. 3T 

The Being tiIxVT is One in the Infinivkrsh 
IS Dual in the lniyerse. 

You perceive in tlie atom and the sun; and in all generic life, and 
in man, tins dual life made manifest. So persistent is it that even the 
leaves upon the trees, the different forms of vegetation, every variety 
of Fauna express themselves in reference. to this duality or twofold 
Being. 

Among the Egyptians there could never be more than twelve 
who understood the mystic name of the only God; but the Dwliie 
Mother and the Divine Father as the Dual expression of the God of 
the universe, could be always spoken of. Jehovah Elohim, was the 
nearest that the Hebrew language could give expression to that sacred, 
mystic name signifying the great Uncreate^ Father-Mother. The only 
Avord in Egyptian lore which man was not able to speak was that 
w^hich expressed God, the God-head; but the Father-Mother, the Love 
and Wisdom inblent, or Dual Life could be spoken. The feminine 
Deity is veiled in the Isis of the Egyptians, as the masculine Divinity 
was symbolized in Osiris; nor were Isis, Osiris, and Horus, ever mis- 
taken for the unknown, nameless God, ensphered in the Innermost 
Heavens; for that Deity the Egyptians had no name that was ever 
breathed; nor even known outside the most sacred temple, the "Holy 
of Holies." Osiris was represented as the Sun of light, symbolizing 
the Creative Power; Isis was worshiped as the Mother, the symbol of 
generic life. But behind both was the Infinite A, L", M, the Attunx 
Avliich in Egyptian, embodies the feminine as well as the masculine. 

In Egypt you will also find the genesis of life symbolized in the 
name of lonah; this name means the Doce; the over-brooding pres- 
ence of the Holy Spirit incubating that which is to give expres- 
sion to the Deity; hence, even in Hebraic times, the Dove is made 
the symbol of the Holy Spirit brooding over Jesus at the time of His 
baptism by John. The Dove appears in Sacred Writ through the Kab- 
ala, because, among the Egyptians, doves were not only the message- 
bearers from one land to another, but the Dove, the Meiiat, was also 
the symbol of the Genetrix, and therefore was made the emblem of 
the Holy Motherhood. As Isis was the Earth-Mother of the Egyp- 
tians, so this sacred Dove was, oftentimes, made the symbol of Juno, 

The Divine Image within the winged sphere of the Egyptians^ 
w^as none other than the immortal Soul and God; the circle symbol- 
izing the finite Soul, the sphere symbolizing the Infinite, the wings 
the emblems of the over-brooding spirit, the Mother Love. 

The unbroken, unmeasured Sphere is God. The divided Sphere, 
or Dual Life, is God revealed. 



18 THE SOUL; 

There were three ways in which God, after being revealed, was 
known to the Ancients. 



First: By Generic Symbols. 
Second: By Numbers. 
Third: By Letters. 

The Generic symbols were derived from Egypt and were, prima- 
rily, twofold. The Letters were derived from Egypt also, but were 
renamed by the Kabala, the Shemoth; (Shema). The numbers, Seph- 
iroth, were given by the Kabala, but were Egyptian: three times 
three and one — nine and one. (This is the origin of the Triune God.) 
The Circle with three Jads and a Tau, is a Kabalistic figure and 
is expressive of the threefold unitary nature of God; the three hy- 
postases or co-ordinates in the Divine Nature, equal and united, as in- 
dicated by the Tau. 

Among the Brahmins the threefold expression, Brahma, Vishnu, 
Siva, referred to the three Potentialities: the one Infinite Good, the 
Creator, to Whom they never pray; the Infinite Preserver, to whom 
they contipually pray; and the Infinite Destroyer to whom they con- 
tinually bend; all typical of the one God. But the ticofold life is in- 
cluded in Brahm. 

In the mythological history of Greece and Rome you have Jove, 
the typical deity governing the heavens, and Maia the beloved of 
Jove. Juno is referred to as the Queen of Heaven, but Venus (who 
bears nearly a dozen names and evidently is descended from Egypt) 
rules the earth, and half the gods. Wisdom appears under the femi- 
nine form of Minerva, who shares with Jove the government of the 
heavens. 

In the North, Odin, although supreme in the Halls of Valhalla, 
still shares his empire over heaven and earth with Frigga, the Sacred 
Mother, who in the supernal kingdom has charge of souls that are yet 
unborn in time. In the subtle mythology of the Northlands there is 
ever to be found this wonderful Duonym, the Divine Mother with the 
Divine Father; whatever lesser deities may be mentioned, and there 
are thousands, still the Father and Mother reign supreme in the king- 
dom of light, in the temple of Odin. 

We know of no nation, nor religion, unless you shall name your 
own religion and nationality as such, but what includes the feminine 
in the acknowledgement of God. But the Roman Catholic Church 
has, by the recognition of the Madonna, associated the mother of 
Christ, in such manner with the Divinity that it gives sanction and 
sacredness to the typical Dual life. 



ITS DUAL KATUBE. 19 

The monad is inseparable from the cluad, and atomic existence is 
discoverable in associated atoms. The triad, quadrad, and quintad 
are subordinate to the duad, Avhich proves the monad. 

When speaking of the expression of God, we speak of every 
manifestation that is twofold in the universe excepting the Soul. The 
Soul is not an expression of God because it is an entity in itself, but 
all other manifestations in the universe, expressions of whatever kind 
that typify life, reveal this dual nature. All that relates to the Infini- 
Terse, or to the unknown or absolute God, (meaning unknown in time 
and space) must be perceived, but whatever is expressed, i. e.: mani- 
fested in dual nature, may be taught; hence from the first expression 
of dual life the divinity was taught in the Divine Father and the 
Divine Mother. The process of formative or creative activity from 
God to nature we may only know by the finite process, which we 
trust will be gathered by you in this Avonderful pathway of life. 

There is no 2)ossible expression in the unitary state, because the 
unit is complete, is one, is being. You might as well say a circle 
could be expressed by a circle, or a sphere by a s^^here. A circle is a 
€ircle, a sphere is a sphere. The moment a circle is broken that is di- 
vision, explanation, expression. As in God there is the Unit, the Infinite 
One, but in all exj^ressions of God there is Dual life; so when the 
Soul seeks expression duality begins. That is. 

The first expressiox of the Soul is Dual. 

The "Throne of God" is whiteness, purity; the innermost and ut- 
termost Heavens; the state of perfect Being. In Kabalistic, and Egyp- 
tian symbolism alabaster is whiteness, being interpreted for that which 
is absolute and pure. Everywhere in the symbolism of the Orient the 
AVhite stone is the synonym of j^urity, 23erfectness. The "Throne" or 
"Kingdom" (as well as the King of the Kingdom) is Malcus or MaL 
cuth; here also is the Kether, the croAvn. Nearest the Throne are the 
Cherubim and Seraphim. 

In all the definitions, in modern languages, you find the Cheru- 
l)ini are "the highest order of angels;" the Seraphim are "the highest 
order of angels;" but you must go back of the derivations of the 
English language to find the primal meaning. Cherubim: the strong- 
ones. Seraphim: the lofty (or bright) ones. Strength here means 
Wisdom; the first expression of the God-like nature from the Soul. 
Lofty — or bright — means perfect, like unto God; Love. When 
the Soul passes first from the "presence of God," — by which we 
do not mean is to depart from Him, but when it passes, in ex- 
23ression, from the state Avhich resembles Deity — the state which is 



20 riTE SOUL; 

The Cherub axd the Seraph 

is THE FIRST EXPRESSION^ OF THE SoUL. 

Tlie Clierub is tlio Masculine; the Serapli the Feminine. These 
are the primal potentialities. 

This is the first departure from the "Father's dwelling," from the 
"Kingdom." This first step toward expression, i. e.: from the inner- 
most life, is this dual expression of Cherubim and Seraphim; having 
no form that can be named a form, but only consciousness. In the Sa- 
cred symbols you will see the winged heads of the Cherubim and 
Seraphim without the form, associated with something that is not 
earthly and yet not like God; one degree removed from the absolute; 
the first condition of expression, from the state that is eternal to the 
state that is not eternal. 

The impulsion of the Soul toward, axd its expression 
ix, or through, jniatter we name ix volution. 

"We use the word. Involution, in contradistinction to the word 
employed by science to explain the process of development in nature: 
Evolution. Involution is the descent from being to existence. By 
descent we only mean as regards expression in matter, i. e, : the state 
of the Soul being absolute, the descent or involution is in that vhich is 
relative, changeful, shadowed. As the eternal state is the .day, so the 
expression as the Cherub and Seraph, might be compared to the twi- 
light that precedes the night of earthly existence. One might consid- 
er that this would seem almost like celestial death; this expression, 
this passing from out the light of the Divine and from the Absolute. 

This impulsion toward expression in matter would seem to be 
what has been herein typified as the passing out of the "presence of 
God" save that God's Love is Omnipresent; for, so far as expression 
is concerned, there is withdrawal from God, that is: the withdrawal 
from the state which is like God, because veiled; or between the 
unit which is Soul and the unit which is God, as one may draw a silk- 
en screen, or pass into another room, and be parted by that though 
not separated from another in Love, so the veil is just drawn, in the 
Cherub and Seraph, between the Soul in the absolute and the expres- 
sion of the Soul. 

You now perceive the Soul is entering upon what we term its in- 
volution. There is no permanent state that can be described to the 
human mind as being the state of the Cherubim and Seraphim. It is 
only in the innermost that you can understand that first transition 
from the oneness to the consciousness of being two. In the first sep- 
aration that, perhaps, faltering upon the verge and barriers of time 
and of becomino" aware of sense, of becoming: at last incarnate in the 



ITS DUAL XATUEE. 21 

material form, there is something of the divine loss of the one^ Avith- 
ont knowing the experience of the tico. Not yet is the final division 
and separation cansed by matter; but in the state of the Cherubim 
and Seraphim, are angels preparing the way, and making manifest un- 
to the Sou], thus divided, that which shall constitute the expression of 
being through mortal existence. 

The duality of the Soul is as eternal as its uxity. 

This is tJie two in one Avhich is never divided in the absolute, but 
only divided in expression. That which was absolute becomes rela- 
tive, neither the Seraph nor the Cherub is a Soul, the two are the first 
act of impulsion of the Soul toward expression. 

Angels are appointed, in ways hereafter to be explained, to have 
charge of those stages of involution, as the Soul approaches matter. 
This is not a sudden flight or descent, this does not occur in an in- 
stant. Tliere we gradations of involution for the Soul as there are 
gradations of evolution for the hodg: not instantly was the atom ready 
to produce the form of man as the first generic expression of life up- 
on the earth; not instantly is the Soul ready, with the first step of in- 
volution, for expression in matter. There are degrees; each step 
being somewhat cf a withdrawal from the state of perfectness; grad- 
ually the light and splendor of perfection, which belongs to the Soul 
must be veiled in order that existence in matter may be expressed; what 
those degrees may represent may not be remembered, because the way 
is carefully closed that not too much of that light, not too much of 
that perfect glory may shine in upon the darkened state in which 
the Soul-impulsion becomes involved, ere the beginning of the pil- 
grimage of Earth. 

The process of ixvolutiox is xot a state of activity. 

It is not a state of angelic ministrations, of the all-conquering 
power of something that has been attained, but the first steps of weak- 
ness, the loss of the God-like state; no Cherub ever winged its way 
on ministration bent; no Seraph is capable of ministration. It is a 
mistake to ever use the words ministering spirits, angels, or archan- 
gels, synonymously with the words Cherubim and Seraphim. 

All states in which the Soul passes toward expression are not de- 
grees of activity, but degrees of preparation. As a man cannot lift 
a burden uphill Avhile he is descending, so while the Soul is passing 
from the oneness, through dual expression, toward matter there is no 
potency from within, the activities are turned within, and grow less 
and less. So when this process of involution is being experienced, it 
is as though from some splendid and wonderful height, some glittering 



THE SOUL 



and glorious sun or world, one were willing to start on a mission, or 
pilgrimage, and kind hands would gradually close the way that there 
might be no looking back, regretfully, at all the glory that was left 
behind; or as a child passing from the parental roof may not look 
back, longingly, into the mother's eyes, nor yet remember too keenly 
the joys of home, for a new hope shuts out childhood and the youth 
from sight; so the attendant angels draw the veil on the Soul thus 
passing out from the Parental dwelling. This is the passage of the 
eternal Bride and Bridegroom, the Soul, into the shadow of mortal 
night. May we not here promise the glorious return? 

Such is the wonderful beauty and perfection of this manifestation 
that as the dual Soul goes on and on in the various degrees of de- 
scent, there is gradually less and less of the glory according to the need. 
Might it not be this that has been referred to, in past time, w^hen Lu- 
cifer, the "Light-Bearer," the "Son of the Morning," was said to have 
disappeared from the skies? Is not this same light-bearer the Soul, 
that becomes willing to suffer eclipse by the shadow of the material 
day; for who can declare the earthly day to be bright if the bright- 
ness of the Soul has been considered? Is it not the glory of the 
earthly sun that eclipses the morning star, the namesake of Lucifer, 
the light-bearer of the ancients; is it not into this earthly night that, 
the Soul by gradual involution descends? 

Through this long line of involution the Soul is making ready to 
experience a voluntary blindness of the celestial state, to experience 
voluntary forgetfulness. As a man preparing to descend into the wa- 
ter equips himself, shutting out the light of day, shutting out the 
wondrous sunshine and air, to the intent that he may find the pearl 
that is beneath the wave, so in putting on this outside armor of forget- 
fulness of the Angel, descending into the outward waters of the great 
sea of time, in being thus engulfed, the Soul is not only, as Soul, 
aware, but voluntarily puts aside the celestial state for the expression 
that is to be given through matter. 

Since expression is the intent of God as manifested in the uni- 
verse, so expression is the intent of the Soul in accordance with its 
finite resemblance to God. 



ITS DUAL NATURE. 23 

All Souls become divided ix expressiox as Cherubim 
AND Seraphim. All Souls pass through the same 

DEGREES OF INVOLUTION IN THEIR APPROACH 
TOWARD EXPRESSION IN MATTER. 

The Soul, tlius divided, approaches matter. As two, who may be 
one at the fountain head, mingling there their prayers and tears, may 
pass on either side of the fountain, and find the rivulet become a 
brook, and the brook grow into a stream, the stream gradually di- 
viding them until they can no longer clasp hands across it, no long- 
er see one another, no longer understand the voice correctly, thus, by 
the gradually approaching waters of time, the Soul is divided in ex- 
pression, and in that divided state seeks recognition through matter. 

This descent toward matter is that which takes away, in a cer- 
tain measure, the oneness and possession of the unit, without reveal- 
ing the power of the dual life. 

Since the Cherub and Seraph must express that which is nearest 
to God, the intermediate states, until there is approach to and expres- 
sion in matter, have no name. The reasjon no other degrees can be 
named is because the impulsion begins with the Seraph and Cherub 
and does not take any form of expression until there is organic life. 
All that precedes this expression in matter must be hidden, as well as 
the unclouded state of the Soul, the pure whiteness of Soul life in the 
presence of God. Such states have been named the states of mystery 
that precede the mortal birth, only known through inspiration and re- 
corded in the mystic and wonderful revelations of past time, when the 
knowledge of pre-existence Avas veiled in such profound secrecy; so 
veiled because but few could understand its meaning. 

The dual nature of the Soul was soon swallowed up in external 
worship, and amid the darkness of the intervening ages was lost sight 
of, until the words Cherub and Seraph, or Cherubim and Seraphim, 
came to have no meaning except as images in the temples of Jehovah 
or Angels nearest to the Throne of God. 

As said before, those states that precede the earthly genesis are 
not states of activity, only states of preparation, so that between 
the Cherubim and Seraphim and the expression in matter there are 
long gradations of consciousness in descent. This dual life thus de- 
scending through the spheres of preparation toward material exist- 
ence — of which angels and archangels, in various degrees, are aware, 
as they have passed through all experiences in worlds, systems, and 
suns — in each step of descent is in charge of a less mighty an- 
gel, i. e. : those who have charge of the Cherubim and Seraphim are the 
archangels and then, by degrees, appointed angels of the solar system^ 



-24 THE SOUL; 

and then angels of the earth, or any given planet prepared to receive 
the first expression of Soul in matter. 

Inspiration has revealed the pre-existent state to man: all Script- 
ures declare it; all religions reveal it; seers and sages of every age 
have perceived and taught it; poets, breathing the inspiration of the 
gods, have sung of this surpassing theme. Wordsworth, in his beau- 
tifuh'Ode on Immortality ,"gives hints and statements of this pre-exist- 
ence which you would do well to revive by reading, since he refers to 
the Soul and its "trailing clouds of glory," — lines of light from the 
celestial kingdom that accompanied it into mortal existence — and 
to the line of reminiscence that does not seem so far off in childhood, 
but is gradually overgroAvn and eclipsed with the external life. 

In the philosophies of Germany, in many of the modern systems 
of thought, these ideas are very clearly outwrought, though not traced 
to their original and absolute source. It is confessed by all, that the 
lieretofore, (we mean the absolute heretofore,) the heretofore of the 
Soul, has in some way conveyed itself to the comprehension of man. 

Science asks you to follow the evolution of the physical form 
from the atom through the various changes up to worlds; from the 
primordial cell up to the highest orders of created organic existence. 
Or as you follow the growth of the germ within the sod; its expan- 
sion, its quickening, which you cannot see, and you know that 
there are certain chemical processes going on all the time which are 
veiled, to your senses, until the results appear; so your teachers in- 
vite you to contemplate the involution of the Soul, from the abso- 
lute state of its being and its relation to God, through the gradations 
of descent of the twofold or dual expression until it reaches the ge- 
neric life of earth; in this involution the attributes of the Soul are be- 
coming ready to be enshrouded in matter. The point of meeting mat- 
ter were it not for the results, (the glory in the universe, veiled by the 
God of the Heavens in the shadow,) would be most depressing; for 
who can think of or comprehend Souls preparing thus to express them- 
selves in the shadow of material things without supposing that angels, 
and archangels are there in Heaven? And they should have some 
reason for not expressing themselves; either have had previous expres- 
sion or are waiting other expression. May not these gaze on Souls 
aV)out to seek expression as one might gaze on friends departing to a 
distant land, or as one might gaze on those who go down into what 
is called the "valley of the shadow of death"? Yet those who go into 
the shadow of death go unto life, those who go into the shadow of 
birth go unto death. 

Thus passing from the kingdom of the Soul to the kingdom of 
matter, from the kingdom of life to the kingdom of death, from that 



ITS DUAL NATURE. 25 

which is absolute to that which is relative, from that which is all per- 
ception to that which is only dim reflection, or expression, from all 
knowledge unto the struggle to obtain knowledge, from all posses- 
sion into the poverty of external life, there is a proportionate loss — if 
the word may be employed— of the Soul state as there is gain of out- 
ward expression; so that when the expression approaches what is called 
birth the less is the consciousness aware of the absolute state of Soul, 
^or is it until there is preparation for such a condition as to be almost 
like forgetfulness that Souls are ready for expression in matter. Yet 
ever in God's encompassing love, that which becomes death in the 
celestial kingdom becomes birth in the kingdoms beneath it; and that 
which draws a veil between the consciousness of the Soul and God, is 
that which awakens the consciousness of the Soul toward expression; 
and there is no other way for the Soul to have this expression than to 
pass through the division and by mortality regain consciousness of 
immortality; the veil is woven of lines of light with which mortals, 
eventually, trace their existence back unto the Soul. 

Is not time the Lethean stream, and are not the waters of sense 
the waters of oblivion? But all this is not only by consent, it is by 
active impulsion from within the Soul. The impelling power that 
causes Deity to express the life of the universe in twofold and 
manifold w^ays, is in the Soul repeated in a finite degree, and this 
im23elling power causes the Soul to seek expression. The Soul is di- 
vine and eternal in itself, perfect in its uttermost possession, but it 
seeks expression, and that expression can only be attained in one way. 
The law of the universe shows that anything less than Deity or less 
than the Soul, must express that which the Soul and Deity possess, 
and as God is manifested in the twofold nature of Being by expres- 
sion, so the Soul is manifested in its twofold nature by expression. 
This expression, therefore, constitutes the animating purpose of the 
departure from the unitary to the dual state, and for that the 
Angel gives unto the dual life the consciousness that is within the life 
of the unit, when it is a unit. Deity we know has Being without ex- 
pression and the Soul has being without expression, in the state that 
is absolute, that pertains to God and the Soul. 



Creatiox is not greater thax the Creator. 



That which is expressed by the Soul cannot excel the Soul. But 
as creation gives expression to the Will (Logos) of God, and mani- 
fests God, so existence gives expression to the will (wish) of the Soul. 



20 THE SOUL; 

Souls come into the material expression by conscious loss, and pass 
out of it by regaining that loss. This is more fully revealed in the dif- 
ferent states through which the Soul ascends than in the descent. 
For this very reason the loss of the consciousness of the unit is not 
measured. When you fall asleep you do not know it, but when you 
awaken you are fully aware and know you have been sleeping. The 
falling asleep in time from the eternal wakefulness of the Soul, is so 
gradual and so continuous that the steps are not known in time and 
sense, and they cannot be described because there is nothing to fix 
them; it is only little by little that the Divine state ceases to be pos- 
session; little by little is the Soul enrolled in darkness and veiled from 
the presence of God. Matter is the primal veil which separates the 
Soul from the consciousness of itself and of God. When there is a 
"rending of the veil" in the temple, then the Innermost is again re- 
vealed. 

What this state of division is, how it may pass on and on, how 
gradually, through involution. Souls lose the eternal possessions and 
how regain them, you will hereafter more fully know; but bear in 
mind that all the states between the Soul and the expression in matter 
are states of inaction; no Soul approaching the earth for expression 
is useful in any spiritual or angelic state; bear in mind that no one up- 
on whom the veil of mortal obscurity is falling can be used as a mes- 
senger of light to any Souls "in any states. Voluntarily shadowed, 
it is like the planting of the seed in the dark that the light may cause 
it to germinate. 

All this is revealed in a more perfect way in the conditions of 
the Soul between its first state and its final expression in matter. 
When we refer to its 'first state' we do not mean that this expression 
necessarily begins with any particular world, or sun, or system of suns; 
but when Souls are in the eternal state they are aware of eternal be- 
ing; w^hen Souls are entering the avenues of expression they become 
less conscious of this and more conscious of existence. The state be- 
tween the eternal and the temporal, between the state of the Soul 
and the material state, is that which we have likened unto death, or to 
the shadows of the night. 

All that relates to expression will be more fully considered, 
but you will please remember, although the dual life is expressed 
first by this division, that duality is forever in the Soul; and this 
dual life is Avhat constitutes the Soul in its entity; and whatever is 
less than the Soul is the division of the Soul, and is expression, but 
that which is the possession shall go back to the treasure house of 
the Soul. 



ITS DUAL XATUBE. 27 

We have endeavored in this lesson to bring to your consciousness 
and knowledge the state from which the Soul, in its first step from 
the absolute, is, seemingly, divided, to the state which is the final 
preparation for experience through matter. The earth (or other plan- 
ets) already having been created, organized, and prepared to meet 
the Soul. 

We shall give in the next lesson: 

The Genesis of Mortal Life 
AXD the Embodiments of the Soul ix Matter. 

We trust you will all the time keep in view that the Soul does 
not lose its character as an entity, though divided in expression; that 
the Soul does not lose its quality of being perfect like God; and that 
the Soul is not changed in any of its attributes either by contact with, 
or expression through matter; that matter, as it is termed, has no ef- 
fect upon the Soul, but only affects its expression; and that if one con- 
sents to seek the shadow one may illumine that shadow as much as 
possible, but must bear with the shadow while Avithin it. 

We hope to be able to show that there is not only an explanation 
but consolation for all those mysteries, ills, and problems in human 
life that have heretofore been inexplicable to man's moral nature. 
We hope to show that there is equal cause and remedy, and that what- 
ever occurs in human expressions on the earth, or on any planet, can 
in no way affect the Soul in its eternal being, nor in its divine quality 
of absolute life and light. As light is the life of the j^hysical universe, 
so God's Love and Goodness must be the life of the Soul; and when- 
ever and wherever the Soul may endeavor to express itself God's 
Love is there. 

We ask you to remember the definitions of the following words 
as we shall use them in the next lesson: 

We use the word Impulsion as the volition of the Soul toward 
expression in matter. We shall use the word Sjnrit as a hreath of 
that impuUion for each Embodiment on earth, and that Avord will be 
used only with reference to an individual embodiment, but the impul- 
sion from the Soul will include all expressions. 

We shall use the word Embodiment as the expression of that 
Spirit in human form, and the word Embodiments as the successive 
expressions from the Soul in human forms. 

The word Expression we always use as being that which from 
within the Soul is manifest through matter, or through a condition 
less than the Soul, as it is in the outward, mortal, and external. 



28 THE SOUL. 

Wo shall use the word Within, not Avith reference to time and 
space but, with reference to the innermost, or that which pertains to 
the Soul; that which is the outermost being matter, all expressions 
of Soul are toward the outermost. 

AVe have used the word Archangels to denote the highest order of 
Angels beyond the earth. There are many degrees of Angels. The 
word Angel will afterward be more fully known Avhen you perceive 
what the result is of the expression of the Soul through matter. 



THIRD LESSON. 

THE EMBODIMENT OP THE SOUL 
IN HUMAN FORM. 

THE GENESIS. 

Creation is the direct action of God's Will producing Avhat after- 
ward may be governed by law. Law is not creative but governing. 
There can be no Law without a Law Maker, no Force without a 
Cause, no Cause without Intelligence, Volition. 

The Infinite Creative Power is God; 

mamfested in tJie universe. 

Matter is the primal postulate of Creation. God the Infinite 
Hypostasis. 

Creation precedes Generation. 
The Creative act brings into existence. Generic Law perpetuates. 
Creation is as constant as Generation. 

There is but one connecting power between the Creator and mat- 
ter and that is the 

Breath of God. 

The Breath of God is the Generic life of all material things. 

"Where the "Beginnings" are is Creation; i. e. : where God meets 
matter. 

Each beginning is a creation; whether of a solar system, a sun, 
a world, or, after dynamic evolutions, of the different types of or- 
ganic life. 

Every distinct type is a creation. 

The Book of Genesis, in the Hebraic Bible, is the Kabalistic ac- 
count of Creation, and contains that Avhich (Avhen interpreted correct- 
ly) clearly sets forth the enactments of the Divine Will. 



30 THE SOUL; 

Thus after the six "evenings" and six "mornings," i. e.: six peri- 
ods preceding and six following the Creative action, Creation was 
complete in your solar system, as it had been in all previously created 
systems. "In the beginning," referring only to the commencement of 
Creative enactments in the cyclic relations of your solar system and 
the earth. 

Evolution follows Ceeation. 

Thus prepared matter awaits the expression of the Soul. 

When any solar system is ready for expressions of life, there oc- 
curs that which is typified, according to the symbolism of the ancient 
interpretation, in the Book of Genesis. The physical life has been 
evolved to meet the involved Soul, and, at the point w^here they can 
meet, creative expression in the physical form takes place, and could 
no more be prevented than could two lines of light approaching each 
other be prevented from conjunction, or any two coincident lines be 
prevented from meeting. Just where matter is prepared to meet this 
involved Soul science can never discover, and only Revelation can 
make known. 

The Breath of the Soul is the generic life in matter of the expres- 
sions of the Soul under such circumstances as we shall make known. 

The Spirit is the breath oe life 

that reaches matter from the Soul. 

At the gates of Paradise — the typical Eden of human existence, 
the Eden of innocence, of unconsciousness of the Soul-state and also 
of that which is to come; the complete unconsciousness of what matter 
is to be when expression begins — stand the summoning Angels and 
Archangels. They do not leave the Soul companionless. Such Souls 
as are to take on expression in outward life are grouped, according to 
their states, and enter the typical Eden of human life where the 
earth has been prepared, by the Creative Act of the Deity and the op- 
eration of law, in a generic sense, to meet the Soul. The first impul- 
sion from the Soul in its dual capacity, and the impulsion from the 
Deity conjoined, produce man, the typical Adam and Eve. 

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God 
created He him; male and female created He them." 

"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and 
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living 
soul." 

In the first paragraph quoted the dual nature of God and the du- 
al nature of the Soul are revealed. We think "his own image" refers 



ITS EMBODIMENTS 31 

to the image of the Soul, i. e., dual. "In the image of God created 
He him," the image of the Soul is like the image of God, which is fur- 
ther proven by "male and female created He them." In the second 
paragraph quoted, "the dust of the ground" refers to all atomic life 
beneath man; as it is a well known, and almost axiomatic, fact in sci^ 
ence that the human organism contains some portion, however minute, 
of all the primal substances of the earth. "And hreatlied into his 
nostrils the breath of life;" here is the Spirit of God producing the 
action of "breath of life," spirit of man; life is used here for existence^ 
genesis instead of being, the latter is the soul state. "And man be- 
came a living soul," i. e.: the Soul had taken on the expression of 
life instead of remaining in the state of being. 

The Garden of Eden, the Paradise of the dual expression of ma- 
terial life on earth, appears clear under the light of this interpretation. 
This Paradise, the Eden, is the state of innocence into which the life 
is first introduced on earth, ignorant and innocent, " a little lower 
than the angels," because the angel is that which must lose itself in 
matter, even thus divided, to begin expression. Therefore, Avhen 
dual life finds expression in material form occurs that which is de- 
nominated "the fall," i. e.: the soul has put off its celestial, and has 
taken on its terrestrial state. 

This typical Garden of Eden, portrayed in the Book of Genesis, 
is the introduction of man and woman on earth, the expression of the 
Soul, not only in its dual, but in its involved state. "The fall" of 
man is the descent from the celestial kingdom to material life, the in- 
troduction into matter. And the whole narrative ( although it seems 
to have been termed a fable by some) is a very careful, and very dis- 
tinct statement of that which was known to the Ancients and pre- 
served by the Kabala concerning the contact of the Soul with matter. 
And that was denominated the Eden state, because it is the state of 
pleasantness, of innocence. Innocence differs from purity in this: 
that innocence is without knowledge, purity is victory. So after all 
this state of innocence is the state of being tempted, and the matter 
or material things in which the Soul seeks expression must contain the 
elements of temptation. The serpent was the coil of material life 
which surrounds, encompasses or forms the environment here. All 
that is meant in the Adamic fall is that the consciousness of the ce- 
lestial state is overshadowed or eclipsed by the consciousness of time, 
or the sense of this limitation, so that the outward state is not aware 
of the Soul and its celestial state. 

The earth and heaven having been prepared, the Creative 
Act by the Creator, was, for the last time, in operation; producing, 



■•^ THE SOUL; 

The first expression of the Soul on earth: Man and Woman. 

The typical Adam and Eve. 

Adam: the red eartli, i.e., the creature of the earth. 

Eve: life, ] . 

Eva: serpent '^ !• ^•* the saviour, the woman, the spouse, the 

Evi: desire ' I tempter, the sharer. 

This Creation ( Adam and Eve ) was not simply one pair, ( but 
■whenever and wherever the earth or other involving planets are ready 
for the Adamic birth there man and woman are created.) They ap- 
peared as created, not as generic beings. 

The inbreathing of the Soul into matter is Spirit, so that that 
which precedes every embodiment is the breath of its life; and the 
breath of that life is the Spirit of that life. The spirit of Adam, 
therefore, is the spirit of the first or primal man; and the spirit of Eve 
the spirit of the primal woman. This dual expression of Adam and 
Eve, or 'the man of earth and the woman of earth, and the woman the 
serpent, mean: out of the paradise of the Soul, the man of earth, 
abandoning the spiritual companionship which precedes the earthly, 
and the celestial companionship wdiich was before that, enters the 
mortal state; the earth is the serpent, the primal mother, the Egyptian 
Isis, the surrounding coils of the senses. It was not Eve ( matter, or 
the wisdom of the serpent )who was the Soul wife of Adam, she was 
the outward exj^ression of which Lilith was the Soul; as Adam was 
not the Bridegroom of the Soul. Thus the outward woman came 
unto Adam as told in the Garden of Eden, following him into mate- 
rial life from within. 

As the masculine is the aggressive nature, representing the con- 
quering poAver, the element of force in the universe; so the man pre- 
ceded the woman. In the translation it is said: that God took a rib 
from the side of Adam, and this He made into the woman. This 
may be interpreted in its primal meaning in ten or twelve different 
ways. The interpretation we would give it would mean that it was 
the inner or vital portion of Adam's life, the part nearest the heart, 
which means the innermost essence or the life that was expressed after 
Adam, and this innermost expression took the form of Eva, and this 
form was, not only Eve (life,) but Evi (desire,) temptation, because 
while nature might not tempt man, while the physical surroundings 
might not be sufficient temptation, there was embodied in Eve that 
which was nearest and dearest. Therefore the whole moral proposi- 
tion of the world, as related to man and woman, is revealed in this 
great secret of the dual existence in the primal state of physical ex- 
pression, as here portrayed. 



ITH> EMBODIMENTS. 33 

There is no interchange of sexes in the exjjressions of the Soul. 
Embodiment in man is the expression of the Impulsion from the Soul 
in its masculine, and woman from the Soul in its feminine state. 
Here let us distinctly state that it is not according to our teaching 
that there is ever any transference of the sexes, the masculine princi- 
ple of the Soul is always expressed in masculine form, and the femi- 
nine principle always appears in the feminine form. The masculine 
principle is the aggressive, the conquering element, the feminine is 
the inner, the center, the conserving element. In all instances of the 
first expressions in matter the masculine is first and the feminine after- 
ward, thus the typical Adam and Eve illustrated the usual order of the 
expressions of Embodiments in earthly life. 

There are always the two expressions in human form represent- 
ing one Soul (the masculine and the feminine embodiments) upon the 
earth at the same time, each expressing a corresponding degree of un- 
foldment. Beginning equally in the first embodiment, this equality 
(of unfoldment) continues through all subseque^it embodiments. 

You must bear in mind that we do not teach that there are more 
expressions from the same Soul than the one man and woman upon 
the earth at the same time. 



The first expression of the Soul ix matter is 
ix the form of max axd womax. 

No lower type of existence could express that which humanity re- 
veals; no other type than humanity could express the Soul and that 
which is intended to be expressed or represented. But as in all kinds 
of existence there must be the lowest expression you must begin at the 
commencement. 

The first state of human life is the state into which the Soul de- 
scends having taken upon itself the involution toward expression. 
That is the beginning so far as humanity is concerned, no human life 
so low upon the earth that that life does not represent the beginnings 
of all Souls in their expressions here, and none so high that they do 
not typify the attainment of all Souls ere expression is finished here. 
Every Soul thus voluntarily taking upon itself expression in matter 
must begin at the beginning. As one learns a language by beginning 
Avith the alphabet and grammar; as one learns arithmetic by beginning 
with the numerals and their combinations, and higher mathematics 
must follow arithmetic, so in the expressions in matter Souls com- 
mence with the state that is lowest upon the planet that is approached. 



34 THE SOUL; 

Not having experiencGcl the existence of earth, when a Soul ap- 
proaches this planet it must take upon itself the beginnings of human 
expression. So the primal step is of the earth, earthy; and the Adam- 
ic state is the typical earthly race of mankind, illustrative of all who 
take up this mortal life. This first stage of existence, the infancy of 
the race, is partially revealed by science, but the spiritual and primal 
solution of existence is unknown, and the material one is sought for. 
In the spiritual explanation is found the only true solution of life: 
that when the birth on earth begins, the expression of Souls must 
take the farthest point from the celestial state. Souls, in expression, 
do not hegui by conquest over the earth, that is attained. If you do 
not begin at the lowest stage to build, you can have no foundation for 
the edifice; and the archway would never be built if a strong founda- 
tion were not laid beneath the soil; so this physical existence, in its 
primitive stages of expression, is simply of different degrees of con- 
sciousness, which may be called man, and those stages in their primal 
degrees constitute the beginning of every expression on earth. 

As when a very good man may engage in some material work 
which requires all his thought and attention; the work itself may be 
much inferior to him, but he 'inust devote all his energy to it; or if 
one is building a house, although it is built for the body and not for 
the spirit, yet the thought is intent upon the building, so in the lowest 
or first expression of material life existence is what is expressed. The 
race is typified in the individual; the babe only gives expression to 
physical life at first, all else is hidden, has being, but is unexpressed. 
The same is true in all beginnings, even when pretty well advanced in 
general human expression; if one begins a new work it is executed 
clumsily and awkwardly at first. One who had never drawn a pict- 
ure could not very well portray even the simplest forms at first, there 
must be many strange lines and blemishes before anything deserving 
the name of art could be reached. The first steps in material life are, 
therefore, as said before, steps of existence. 

The embodiments are ix succession, and embrace 

three general divisions of human life. 

The first is the Adamic stage, of Physical life. 
The second is the Hermetic stage, of Intellectual life. 
The third is the Messianic stage, of Spiritual life. 

The expressions of physical life are, at first, seemingly, without 
intellectual or moral purpose, yet in reality the intellectual and moral 
purposes are there ready to come forth when the successive steps of 
victory over matter shall have made it possible. In each of these 



ITS EMBODIMENTS 35 

general stages there are many degrees ( or culminations ) and in each 
degree many successive lines of embodiment. 

The successive lines of the expression of one Soul in any one 
planet are really typified in the single life of man and woman. Child- 
hood is the state of physical growth; there is the feebleness and lim- 
itation to conquer, and the physical surroundings seem to overcome 
whatever else may be enfolded there. When the childhood of the 
race is here there seems little, through its various degrees of physical 
growth, to indicate that which at last attains success over its physical 
surroundings when the mental and moral nature begin to unfold. 
These first feeble lines of expression are what occur in the many 
successive embodiments of the first stage of expression. It would 
possibly not be very gratifying to you to know what is the first ex- 
pression, nor would it flatter you, perhaps, but evolution does not flat- 
ter either. You cannot find the lowest human expressions upon the 
earth at the present time. But take the lowest human states as illus- 
trative of this typical beginning, though not in reality the beginning, 
then consider all grades until you reach the highest expression, this 
would be typical of the conclusion, the final state upon the earth. 
With the exception of the first stages there is manifested to your 
vision nearly all the different stages upon the earth to day, of what 
the Soul experiences in the many aeons of its expression upon this 
planet. 

The three stages or degrees of expression are primarily stamped 
upon the human race; but it is best to here explain that while the in- 
tellectual and moYSil 2^088 ibilUies are hinted at in the primal nature of 
man, the expre88io7i of those possibilities seems, in the infancy of hu- 
man embodiments, to be excluded; as we discover in the states of 
races and individuals who seem to have no unfolded moral perception. 
Remember we have not created those states, we are explaining why 
they exist. This lack of mental and moral expression indicates that 
the first stages of expression do not include the moral problems; they 
have not yet been reached in the scale of human progress toward per- 
fect expression. 

Physical life has first to be entered upon, the victory over it and 
the environment of the senses, must come afterward. 

The embodiments follow one after another in more rapid succes- 
sion in the physical states of expression since there is little, or noth- 
ing, of the moral and spiritual harvest to gather, so the successive 
embodiments in the first states come rapidly. The growth is slow, 
and the perceptible advancement in expression from one embodiment 
to another would scarcely be noticed until the final result. In this 
first stage of expression man seems inferior to the animal kingdom 



36 THE SOUL; 

since he has no instinct to govern his appetites, and his mental and 
moral nature is still undeveloped in expression. This is because the 
only law of man's government is the mental and moral (spiritual), and 
because of this he has no blind instinct to guide him. 

The degree of physical expression merely must be repellant to 
contemplate by itself, as it includes all states that precede intellectual 
activity, or mental attainment; constitutes the existence wherein the 
sensuous life governs, wherein there may be enjoyment of the senses, 
wherein there may be some degree of perception, a certain manifesta- 
tion of intelligence, but no approach to the intellectual or spiritual 
awakening, which must come when the race or when the individual is 
dominated by the higher nature. 



A DISTINCT RESULT OR PERFECTION IN ANY GIVEN lINE 
OF EXPRESSION IS A CULMINATION. 

Each Culmination is the termination of a line of successive em- 
bodiments toward a certain point of perfect expression in one direc- 
tion; and while there may be latent suggestions of other lines in the 
same series of embodiments, there is always a dominant purpose, in 
each embodiment of that series, in the direction of the culmination. 

In illustration of this you have the typical states of mere physical 
enjoyment: the glutton, the one whose happiness consists in the amount 
of food consumed and this is made the basis of competition. There are 
some who are typical of that state even now upon the earth. You will 
discover that the achievement in that direction, when it amounts to 
what is considered an achievement, is really almost marvelous as a tax 
upon physical endurance. It is not difficult to perceive that this state 
was idealized in the Epicureans, whose motto was borrowed from 
an honored source. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you 
may die." In the Bacchanalian feasts and revels of your Anglo Saxon 
ancestors no man was considered a devotee who did not finally sink 
with stupor at the end of a banquet. The race has yet a sufficient 
number of those who have not risen above this shrine. You can pos- 
sibly conceive of the state of heroism in which humanity must have 
existed when the highest victory, the noblest exaction, the greatest 
conquest, w^as that which was put into the stomach! 

It is not very long since the evidence of the highest civilization 
consisted in the greatest amount of physical strength. The prize ring 
is a remnant of that which in ancient Rome was the test, almost, of 
the highest humanity. You have, the model of art and intelligence, the 



IT^ EMBODIMENTS 37 

example of Greece, to prove to you that physical strength was consid- 
ered the standard of human perfection. The feats of the gladiators 
and the wonderful skill of the athletes will serve to illustrate this; 
while in the tournaments, in ancient days, prowess was recognized in 
the greatest physical strength. Achilles was scarcely more admired 
then than now. The ideal Hercules still remains the type of perfect 
manhood, and even Jove, the Thunderer, is worshiped upon more 
mountains than Olympus. 

In ancient Egypt, those deities who presided over man's physical 
well-being were the Gods that were most revered, revealing to the 
senses the majesty of their power, leading man to conquest and victory 
by the violence of physical force. The remnant of that age, which 
once was universal, is now to be found in those states of the race, 
some types of which are existent upon the earth today, who have noth- 
ing beyond the physical so far as revealed; who merely exist for that 
first stage of expression, yet the culminations in that direction are al- 
ways to be found where there is achievement in any physical enter- 
prise. The colossal architecture of Egypt includes a culmination in 
that direction, although accompanied by another impelling force which 
is soon to be found dominant. Modern armies fighting at a distance, 
with weapons that do not bring them into hand to hand conflicts, il- 
lustrate another kind of force, a more complex state of expression, but 
the kind of courage or skill found in the prize ring, or in those con- 
tests between individuals, who, face to face and hand to hand, enter 
into tests of mere physical strength without any moral aim, without 
any sense of patriotism, without any object in view save the privilege 
of pounding one another into a recognition of the brute strength of 
one or the other of the combatants, illustrate the typical childhood of 
the race, and of individual expressions in the first contact with human 
existence. Were this the end, the states of humanity that express 
nothing higher would indeed be hopeless. 

That which was witnesssd in Rome and Greece as legitimate 
amusement for the highest in the lands, is now tolerated among sport- 
ing men only. The typical Hercules of antiquity was the typical vic- 
tory by bodily strength. No one can doubt but that in some state he 
has expressed that same victory. 

The spirit of each embodiment is the breath, or impetus, from 
the Soul toward a culmination. A culmination is the highest point 
that can possibly be attained in a given line. In that past age all hu- 
manity was being expressed on that physical plane, there are those 
still attaining perfection and conquest in that direction; whatever is 
less than a culmination or perfection in a given line is an embodi- 
ment toward it, so that the small contests of the weaklings of those 



38 THE SOUL; 

ages were but steps toward the accomplishment of the Herculean state. 
Those who have outgrown the prize ring, and the desire for physical 
contest, may safely conclude that in a past condition they have ex- 
pressed themselves to the fullest extent in that direction. Every step 
toward this culmination, is a step, however, toward the knowledge of 
its fallacy. 

When physical perfection is reached, it is simply to reveal that 
there is something beyond; as one may climb up, out of breath, a 
great steep of a mountain, that seems to be high, only to discover 
that it is the smallest height, and that he must descend into a valley 
to reach the next one beyond, these typical descents are the weaknesses 
in human life, whether physical, mental, or moral; so after Hercules 
comes the pigmy to illustrate that true strength is not in the body. 
This being the first stage of victory, it is also the first revelation of 
weakness. 

The merely physical victory contains its own defeat. 

Matter in organic form contains the elements of disintegration. 
Physical indulgence implies satiety; and material achievement is fol- 
lowed by material decline. As matter is the first obstacle encountered 
in expression, so to vanquish matter seems at first to be the only end, 
but as vanquishment does not come by mere victory in material things 
a more excellent way is shown. 

The second general degree or stage of expression 
is that of the Intellect. 

Hermes (another name for Mercury) was the god of the intellect: 
trade, commerce, invention, mathematics, indeed all learning, as well 
as thievery and robbery were typified in this ancient deity. 

Not all at once does the mind assert its presence and begin to be 
a dominant force. It begins with the beginning of the embodiments, 
and commences to manifest its power before the physical is fully ex- 
pressed, and there are glimmerings all the time, through individual 
lines of life and through all history, that even when a man insists up- 
on the greatest physical strength of the nation or the individual, there 
is something unfolding besides that, so that you have two lines re- 
vealed in expression at the same time and in the same lives. 

We will point to Greece as a culmination of intellectual and 
physical without the moral strength. The Spartans especially were 
among the races of Avhich you have any knowledge in which this 



ITS EMBODIMENTS. 39 

typical physical life was somewliat subordinated to the mental, or 
intellectual; but even the Spartans refused to allow those who were im- 
perfect at birth to live, thus producing a race of heroes, from a phys- 
ical standpoint. And in fact even Grecian art did not in reality, ex- 
cepting through Grecian philosophy, rise above purely a ph^'sical 
standpoint. You will perceive that while the physical may be domi- 
nant in the individual expression, and in the nation, (as the aggrega- 
tion of individuals) there also enters what is termed the mental pow- 
er, this is a certain reflex from the spiritual, is a shadowy suggestion 
of the spiritual, and compared to it is like the light of the moon com- 
pared to the sun. This mental power constitutes the first thirst for 
knowledge; the first idea of trafiic; the advantage over fellow beings 
in trade; the selfish wish to accumulate wealth; the inventions and 
discoveries that promote selfish enjoyment through mental devices; 
handicraft; all skillful labor of the hands; indeed the whole domain 
of the empire over the earth by mental achievements, the mind gov- 
erning the labor of the hands. And you here perceive the distinct 
line of demarcation between man and that which is not man in the 
visible creation of earth, in this: that man is the only creature as a 
physical being who destroys his kind, other generic existences, in the 
animal kingdom only destroy other animals (not those of their own 
species, usually) for food, but man destroys his kind, in the lowest 
states for food, and in the next states in order that he may satisfy the 
demands of the idea of conquest, of victory over his fellow man. The 
first dominant idea of man is the idea of conquest, even when the men- 
tal state intervenes and takes possession, when the physical state is on 
the decline. 

As intellectual power is the next step, its conquests constitute the 
next victory; for the most part the average human life pauses there, 
for a time, imagining this to be the real height. Greece in her pride 
of intellectual strength was as unscrupulous as she was in her physi- 
cal conquests. 

There is no greater deformed monster, in the universe, than 
the intellectual giant devoid of moral strength, as there is no greater 
monstrosity than the physical giant devoid of intellectual and spiritual 
strength. But as one illustrates one step of progress, so the other 
illustrates another. The learning, skill, and conquests of the Hermetic 
philosophers will serve to show what man's intellectual endowments 
may become. But each step must be taken by each Soul. 

The Pharaohs, Caesars, and Napoleons, of history, illustrate the 
culmination of intellect in the line of ambition. Certain learned Egyp- 
tians, Grecians, and even more modern philosophers, illustrate the cul- 
mination of a line of scientific achievement. Today the whole world 



40 THE SOUL; 

may be said to be tending toward this culmination of intellectual 
strength; while in the past there have been individuals and nations who 
have illustrated this culmination, the whole world now, as an average, 
worships at this shrine of intellect. May not the story of CEdipus, be 
intended as an example of the blindness of mere intellectual power? 

The mental states (i. e.: states of intellectual achievement) seem 
to be somewhat enwound with the spiritual, but the latter is not dom- 
inant, seems only secondary, or exists as an aid to the intellectual 
achievements: as in the observations of natural laws; discoveries in 
nstronomy or geology; various inventions and devices for carrying 
forward the scientific pursuits of the world, and for the overcoming 
of the material disabilities under which mankind labor. In this di- 
rection must be included all inventions, all discoveries of territory, all 
voyages upon sea and journeys upon land, everything that enables man 
to build and pile up great monuments of power, and works of physi- 
cal appliance for the purpose of fortifying his physical strength. 

Thus the pursuit even of abstract science, separate from any mor- 
al impulse, is, in itself, a mental, and not a spiritual, thing, and the 
greatest advancement, as it is termed, in the glory of art, science, and 
civilization, may occur without the slightest approach to any spiritual 
expression. 

The mental steps are not only much more various, but they com- 
bine many, and more intricate, problems. "VVe will use a few simple 
illustrations, by which you will be able to follow out the analyses by 
applying these illustrations, in modified forms, to the entire realm of 
mental pursuits. As there must be culminations in all lines of physical 
life by each Soul, so these intellectual culminations will be many. In 
certain stages of expression there are several arts, and sciences, or pha- 
ses, of intellectual pursuit at the .same time. But take, for instance, 
the individual life, the typical expression of the Soul that has only 
passed all the stages of physical culminations, and physical weakness, 
and believes that, after all, physical strength is the greatest, but must 
be accompanied by mental power. Then the individual begins to 
know the mental, or rather commences the lines upon lines of mental 
approach to conquest. 

The steps in the direction of art, for instance, are various and 
slow at first. In music, the one who struggles to that which can- 
not be attained in one embodiment, for which there is, as yet, little 
ability, and yet for which there is such desire, and with persistence is 
continued through many embodiments. Among the average children, 
3'ou will find, perhaps, nine of every ten who can learn music; seven 
of the ten learn indifferently, three out of the ten learn horribly; and 
all learners are as so many embodiments of torture. Your neighbor's 



ITS EMBODIMENTS. 41 

€liild, over there, is on the road to a culmination in music, but through 
the various sounds you are made aware that the child is very far, as 
yet, from culminating. Is not this true of poetry? One genius writes 
a poem and sets a whole brood of j anglers to making rhymes as near 
to poetry as the crowing of the cock is to the song of the nightingale. 
Some one sings a song and the echo is caught up by every bluejay and 
catbird. Yet these who only croak now will one day sing. 

In all ages geniuses are the culminations of a given line. 

AVe would name Mozart as a genius because, untaught, in child- 
hood he knew the principles of harmony. He did not know because he 
had never had experience, but he knew because he had had experience 
in previous lives, he had taken all the steps until that life was the cul- 
mination. This enabled Mozart to know music at three years of age; 
not because his Soul, or spirit, was any more tuneful than any other, 
but because he had taken the preceding steps in preceding lives to 
that culmination, while another might be culminating in poetry, 
another in painting, or other art, he was culminating in music. This 
is encouragement for all those who do not know musical harmony 
now, encouragement to such of you as may be tortured by your neigh- 
bors, or friends, who imagine they are attaining some state of musical 
perfection; they will attain it. When genius appears the world rec- 
ognizes its light. All steps towaid genius are steps of aspiration. 
The man who wishes to play, the one who wishes to sing, certainly 
shall play and sing because it is something yet to be attained. What 
a pitiful sight it was, in the minds of many of his friends, to see the 
giant genius of Goethe endeavoring to paint a picture! He could 
write a poem, he knew much of philosophy and science, he had spirit- 
ual intuitions that were deeper than those of other men around him, 
but he wanted to do that which he could not do, he must needs study 
painting! 

If the art or gift is something that has been attained; if one has 
been a musical genius, that is evident from this fact; that one is not 
seeking for it, and yet is familiar with mnsic. Here is a man who 
can play well, his friends say: why do you not follow music? He 
has no desire to do it because he can do it, because it is a part of his 
past experiences. People are most anxious to undertake that which 
they cannot do. You will hear people say: oh, that is beautiful mu- 
sic but I have no desire to perform myself; but you will hear them 
criticise some particular portion with accuracy and taste; it is because 
they have been cultivated in that direction. Many art critics do not 
paint, but they cetainly have a priori knowledge of art. We use all 



42 THE SOUL 



these illustrations because they come into your daily lives, and they 
show you the lines of experience in yourselves and others around you, 
and prove to you what is the meaning of these different degrees of 
unfoldment. Otherwise between the man who has no talent and a 
genius, like Mozart or Beethoven, there would be a wide space impos- 
sible to span in eternity, but when you know that the man who has 
no gift or talent, will have, that he is on the road to genius, and will 
culminate in that direction, it will clearly illustrate that genius trav- 
els in lines of unfoldment toward perfect expression, that there is a- 
chievement in one degree after another, that the one who can paint 
pictures is only at one end of the line and the one who cannot, but 
wishes to, is at the other end. 

Genius is the culmination of many steps toward perfection in one 
direction. Then wherever there is genius distinctly manifested it is 
the final expression of the individual Soul in that one direction. 

Each may know by the geniuses of the world what the culmina- 
tions of all will be, or have been, for each Soul must express itself as 
perfectly as any other in those directions. 

It is not best to speculate what the individual state is, or where 
one is on the earthly pilgrimage, what the stage of development one 
has just past, or what one is entering into; just now each one must 
experience the line of the individual embodiment for what it presents 
itself to be, and what one desires to attain is a prophecy. 

In these lessons it is well to separate personalities from principles 
as far as possible, and yet know that every principle stated here ap- 
plies to every individual Soul; and knowing this there is an explana- 
tion for all the fragmentary existences seen in the world, and the ex- 
periences within one's self. These states of mental and intellectual 
unfoldment are sometimes mistaken for something higher, it is well 
to draw the line distinctly, at once, and see that no amount of human 
achievement, such as victory through the methods of mechanical and 
intellectual labor, can be called victory in the end excepting as an il~, 
lustration of what life is not for; just as the physical culmination is 
nothing in itself, but is an expression of what life will not finally ex- 
press; so the intellect is an expression of that which the mind will not 
finally express, viz., intellect without spirit; as in the preceding illus- 
tration the expressions were of the body without intellect, but both 
are states of expression which every Soul, having entered this race, 
must surely run, must have passed through or must pass through, 
whichever the degree of the present expression may be, in the usual 
course. 

We would again reiterate: the world is beyond the culminating 
period of mere physical strength, and we may call this the approach 



ITS EMBODIMENTS. 43 

to the culmination of intellect. The power of the intellect is wor- 
shiped today as physical power was worshiped in past ages. The 
giant has simply advanced another degree; the giant of intellect has 
taken the place of the giant of physical strength, so that now the 
whole civilized and enlightened world tends toward the worship of the 
god of the intellect which is, of course, as fallacious a worship, as 
blind a worship, excepting as a stage of growth in expression, as the 
worship of the god of the senses. 

Two lines, and indeed two degrees of culmination are often 
expressed at once, as in the Pharaohs, Caesars, Alexanders, and 
Napoleons of history, whose pride and ambition for conquest and 
earthly dominion was accompanied by equal ability to win the desired 
goal. 

If one has passed, the desire for earthly kingoms how barren seem 
the victories and achievements in that direction! Who would wish to 
be the Czar of all the Russias? Who would possess the throne, crown, 
and sceptre of any kingdom of earth, having borne that burden and 
having had knowledge of the bauble of empire? But if one aspires 
to rule a kingdom have pity, for he is the line toward that expression, 
and he does not know what he seeks until he shall find it and know it 
is dust and ashes. So you understand why there still must be wars, 
why there still must be heroes in battle, why there still must be kings 
and kingdoms. 

All who are upon the earth in human expression have not yet 
passed the condition of physical greatness or mental victory, incident 
upon the overcoming of these states. Whole races have gone on be- 
yond it, but all have not yet reached the very beginning of it. So 
there will follow other races that will begin the intellectual period 
that you are now culminating in. 

As you are now culminating in the directions known in Egypt and 
Greece in past time; as their intellectual culminations were prophecies 
of that which nations are now achieving; so your victories in intel- 
lect are prophecies of what the whole world will one day become. 

Solon and Lycurgus in giving great laws to the state; Homer, 
Hesiod, Anacreon, ^schylus, Pindar the poets of Greece; Pythagoras, 
Euclid, and those who in mathematics handed down, even from the 
first, the numbers to the nations that were to follow; Memnon invent- 
ing letters; Thales and Cadmus in giving other letters and mathe- 
matics to Greece; these are all culminations in a certain line. 

As the physical giant finds his reaction in the dwarf, so the giant 
of intellect must find his antithesis in the imbecile; for frequently the 
giant in body is imbecile in mind, and in the dwarfed or deformed 
body the brightest spirit is seen. The imbecile in intellect is no 



44 THE SOUL; 

greater monstrosity than the giant in intellect. The states of physi- 
cal and mental imperfection, thus reveal the true perfection that is 
still beyond. 



The third general degree of expression is 
The Spiritual Degree. 

In entering upon the consideration of this, the most complex 
stage of human expression, it should be remembered that, as there is 
no partiality in the Soul, so there is no partiality in the experience. 
Each Soul begins at the beginning of experience here, and passes 
through physical conquest and the physical disappointment, the intel- 
lectual conquest and the intellectual disappointment, and enters upon 
the spiritual conquest and all its difficulties to finally overcome them. 
The physical victory is not a conquest over the physical nature, nor is 
the intellectual achievement a conquest over the intellect. 

When you see certain lives that begin better than others, when 
you see certain individuals that have moral qualities, and others that 
seem to have none; when you see those who have every opportunity, 
every means of advancement, yet cannot avail themselves of them be- 
cause of their condition, there must be some real solution, and that so- 
lution is found only in this system which we are explaining to you 
now. If you are journeying up a mountain and have commenced 
your journey sooner than another, you will be at a higher altitude 
than the one who commenced afterward, but as he follows along he 
will find the same steep and stony places, the same briers and thorns, 
the same difficulties to encounter; for human nature is so constituted 
that only what one experiences does one really know. This is proven 
from the fact that no nation benefits by the history of any other na- 
tion. There never was a war that could not have been avoided if the 
lessons of history had been studied. But study does not make experi- 
ence, and the lessons of history are not known until each individual or 
nation realizes them. This is why history repeats itself, that all may 
have similar experiences. This also becomes the leveller; the intellect- 
ual or moral giant and the intellectual or moral dwarf must somewhere 
be reconciled, or there is partiality in the kingdom of God. Then let 
us see how this reconciliation takes place. Under this light the intel- 
lectual giant is an imbecile spiritually, if he has not spiritual growth; 
and therefore if he has pride of intellect, which he does if he has not 
spiritual growth, is not the natural reaction from that a descent into 
the valley to find the weakness of mere intellectual strength? A 
mother loves her imbecile child as well as her bright one; she is even 



ITS EMBODIMENTS. 45 

more tender toward it, she knows somewhere there is a chie to that mys- 
terious labyrinth that seems to imprison from the outward world the 
life that is within. If she could know that sometime there may have 
been pride of intellect, and triumph over the weaknesses of others, she 
would realize that this feeble condition is not more pitiable, and that 
behind that, seemingly, benighted brain there is the Soul that, one day, 
will shine forth, not in intellect alone, but in the greater and diviner 
light of spiritual beauty. 

If the theory of the materialist, or the mere secularist, or even of 
the ordinary theologian were true, there would be no possibility of 
reconciling physical deformity with spiritual grace and power. But 
how often do you see, even in the child born with physical deformity, 
the light of the mind, the light of the spirit that teaches such marvel- 
ous lessons of patience that all the world can listen and learn wisdom. 
Look at the man who boasts, merely, of his physical power, and then 
behold the little child, perhaps a hunchback, whom he may trample 
ruthlessly beneath his feet, and see the light within that eye, the pa- 
tience that is there, and the humility, and learn that this towering 
form is a dwarf beside the feeble one. Thus are outward conditions 
not only reconciled, but made to be steps in the individual growth and 
advancement. Woe unto those Avho feel strong in their mere physi- 
cal might; that strength is of the earth, it is fleeting, it passes away; 
and they must learn by humility, by being conscious of weakness of 
body and mind, the greater strength of the spirit. 

For the most part the ascent through matter, after taking the 
first steps in the infancy of life, is like a spiral pathway, but there are 
deviations which are the reactions from heights that are not real, as the 
superficial height of the body, or the superficial height of the intellect. 
So that which seems to be a descent is not so in reality, neither is it 
so in the mental or moral kingdoms, for, as said before, the giant of 
the intellect, or he who has no goodness or moral strength is a mon- 
strosity, and the reaction from that leads to the simplest mind, but a 
mind of sweetness and goodness. You often hear people say: such a 
sweet nature but no mind. What is the value of mind if it is not 
goodness? To encompass the universe with strong terms and techni- 
calities and fail in the real essence of life! So that these simple 
minds, as they are termed, who must have descended from the height 
of superficial intellectuality to the humility, perhaps, of knowing noth- 
ing, to learn the lessons of sweetness and goodness, are really on the 
way to be giants of strength in spirit. 

The strength of spirit is attained through struggles that may en- 
compass all conditions of life. Not gigantic to the extent of over 
weening physical strength, but for the purpose of usefulness as much 



4G THE SOUL; 

strength as is needed; not gigantic to the extent of worshiping the in- 
tellect at the expense of the heart, but to succeed in all and to fail in 
all until one can forward the work of the spirit; until it has conquered 
all states, not only sin but, the greatest of all sins, self -righteousness, 
and stands in sublime and exalted humility as the typical illustration 
of conquest over the earth. All states between that and the lowest 
condition which you can picture are states of human experience that 
every Soul must pass through. Meanwhile there infiltrates into these 
experiences a religious or spiritual element, a suggestion that that 
which the body, or the mind, only accomplishes is no accomplishment 
at all. 

The first religious experiences must have come like earthquakes 
and tornadoes, undoubtedly taking possession of the first great nation 
at the height of its physical and intellectual splendor, and as the 
lightning tears down the temple or destroys the giant oak, so the first 
religious thought, flashing into a mind blind with physical and intel- 
lectual power, must have been like the rending of the veil in the tem- 
ple. This spiritual power is the beginning of inspiration in every age; 
we mean the recognized inspiration. Whatever flows into man's life 
from the divine, infiltrates through the body and the mind. We do not 
call that inspiration which is the usual activity of spirit in the organic 
nature, this is simply the power which the spirit uses, but which is not 
spiritual power. The distinction between the two is evident; one may 
give expression to many things by a power which is from within, but 
when that which is from within is expressed it becomes an impelling 
force, a light divine. While each one, as an individual, may cause 
certain things to be done, still when the life that is Soul is manifest- 
ed and recognized it becomes the real life, and all that is done is ac- 
knowledged to be under its sway. 

The spirit begins its triumph where the intellect fails: and we 
may say that this ascent is a gradual spiral ascent, increasing as one 
goes on, extending in new lines as one advances. But in the steps of 
expression, although there is continual ascent, there are also, seeming- 
ly, declensions, as between mountains there are depressions, but the 
valleys there are higher than the preceding mountain tops, so in the 
line of embodiments there are descents into the valleys of humility, 
but the seeming decline is not so in the absolute sense, for the valleys 
are among the heights. 

Reaction is as much a law of growth as action. 

So the reaction from physical success and splendor must natural- 
ly follow, although this would be just the opposite to physical success 
and splendor; then following gluttony would there not be starvation, 



ITS EMBODIMENTS. 47 

and following the Hercules would there not be the pigmy and deformed 
one? There must be the spiritual synonym and meaning for every 
physical fact. However you may trace the cause of physical deform- 
ity to physical sources, you can find no other solution, in the great 
world of moral and spiritual force, than that deformity has its compli- 
ment and balance in overweening physical strength unaccompanied 
by moral force, also the valley from the height of a non-intellectual 
and non-spiritual j^hysical expression is the valley of deformity, that 
being its vale of humility; and then and there, in that valley, is the 
beginning of mental power, and the descent from the intellectual height 
is an illustration of spiritual strength. 

The moral problems are most complex, and here is the Avhole con- 
flict, here the battle ground seems to be after all; for when the moral 
p)erception enters there is a different outlook, a different purpose, a 
different condition. That which under the mere physical existence 
seems right, under the moral light seems wrong. So that while it 
might be right under physical law of the ancient Spartans to slay the 
child that was born weak, the moral awakening reveals to the human 
mind that physical weakness may not be mental and spiritual weak- 
ness, and. that human beings have no right to determine, as valuable 
lessons of life may be intended to be taught even by weakness. 

How mistaken the Spartans were in putting the imperfect bodies 
to death was illustrated by the fact, that with all their physical and 
intellectual perfection the Grecians could not preserve their moral in- 
tegrity; how wrong they were in supposing that physical or intellect- 
ual life could be the basis of all advancement was illustrated by the 
elements of corruption that crept in, sweeping them from the face of 
the earth. 

Instead of now slaying imperfect children, they are protected and 
provided for. The blind are made to know of life by touch and hearing; 
they are aided to perform their tasks, and that which is a physical im- 
perfection becomes the aid to songs divine, and sometimes to spiritual 
vision. Supposing Milton had been slain because blind, where would 
have been the visions of paradise; the illustration of that genius that 
exalted the world? 

When the moral force is taking possession it is often veiled before 
recognition, the antitheses are the stepping from heights that are false; 
as the physical height has its downfall in order that a better height 
may be attained, so in the intellectual world there is the recession. 
Let no one suppose that when placed in the spiritual balance the hu- 
man intellect without any Soul weighs any more than the dust which 
expresses no intellect; let no one suppose that simply intellectual ex- 
pression, unaccompanied by moral force or intention, can weigh any 



48 THE SOUL 



more in the great scale of real life, than that life whose intellect is 
veiled, and yet, in all appearances, wears a fair face, with features 
that are delicately chiselled, but under some law has come into the 
world with no intellectual outlook, with no face for earthly victory. 
These illustrations are extreme, but there is no more extreme depth, or 
fictitious height, than that of the pride of intellect, of which this ex- 
treme is the necessary and natural antithesis. So were you to see a 
beautiful form and face, as perfect as any divinity worshiped by Gre- 
cian worshipers of art, unaccompanied by qualities of the mind and 
Soul in keeping with that form, you might well say the next expres- 
sion would be one of deformity. 

As there is deformity in the world, and as it must have a mental 
and moral, as well as a physical, cause, or there must be injustice to 
some one, so it is but proper to recognize that imperfections in the 
physical and mental life are illustrations of moral propositions and are 
portions of the great equity of existence; then, too, in reconciling the 
relations of kings who wish to be peasants and peasants who wish they 
were kings, every one has an opportunity of trying both. No one at 
the end of all these different experiences can say that any line of ex- 
pression or experience has been denied. All must know what it is to 
be slaves as all have a natural tendency to be tyrants, all must know 
by the knowledge of possession what are the responsibilities, trials, 
and temptations, as well as the redeeming and excusing features in 
each expression. So he who labors for his daily bread is made to do 
double labor by the deflections of the millionaire, and he may be un- 
reconciled to this; he who subsists by honest toil must be obliged to 
change places with the man whom he envies; when he experiences the 
poverty of riches he is glad enough then to return to the more hum- 
ble and noble position. In fact whatever men covet they will have an 
opportunity of trying. Whatever they do not care for in worldly pos- 
sessions they have experienced and outgrown. 

When we consider the moral world, as the intellectual is very 
much more complicated than the physical struggle, how much more in- 
tricate become the moral problems! The moment the spirit begins to 
assert itself the battle begins. It is not a battle between the intellect- 
ual nature and material life, when the intellect becomes, unqualifiedly, 
the victor, but here is the battle of ages; between the voice that final- 
ly w^orks its way through from the Soul into outward expression, and 
man's unconquered, selfish, nature; here is the conflict and the battle 
ground; here it is that the Titans wage war; here it is that all final 
victories are won. The other struggles, for physical or intellectual su- 
premacy, are merely different states of selfishness, but the first time 
man knows that he must forfeit self, or that there is a stage wherein he 



ITS EMBODIMENTS. 49 

must vanquish selfish desires, the battle begins; that is the moral start- 
ing point. The intellectual nature, and even the physical life, asserts 
man's supremacy; but what he can win by conquering self he learns 
for the first time in his moral nature, he has it in the voice of the Soul, 
which tells him he has no right to any possession merely because he 
can win it. As a giant would not be excused for treading down chil- 
dren in the street, as a man of intellect should not be excused for de- 
frauding those who are ignorant, so man's moral nature begins, by 
slow degrees, to make him aware that his intellect and that his physi- 
cal life do not justify their full assertion; that he has no moral right, 
even though he has the physical power, to win supremacy and hold it; 
and the real law of life is, when possessing strength not to use it 
against others, but /or others. 

The subtle difference between the man who cannot kill and the 
one who is a murderer, is the difference in conquest over self. He who 
says he can slay if he choose, does violence to either his moral, or in- 
tellectual nature; for the choice depends upon the growth, upon the de- 
gree of conquest. There have been conditions of human civilization 
when it was a virtue to kill. There are states of society, even today, 
under the law of what is denominated self defense, wherein it would 
be considered a virtue to kill. Between the man who slays for gold 
and the man who slays to protect gold, do you suppose there is any 
great moral difference? The conquest is to win a victory over self, 
not over another. And that which is denominated virtue in one state of 
growth, becomes impossible in another. A primal virtue in the ages 
of physical supremacy is conquest, slaughter for individual or national 
empire. Second only to this in lack of moral or spiritual perception 
IS the sacrifice of life in what is commonly called "self defence." One 
cannot slay, one cannot do violence to another, one cannot betray in 
any manner, one cannot degenerate to any vice, one cannot censure, if 
one has outgrown or overcome the state indicated. Neither angel nor 
demon can tempt the man who is above temptation. 

It is in this moral battle ground that the wonderful equity of this 
divine system is more and more manifested. This is not only the rec- 
onciliation of the world, it is the hope of the world. There are those 
in the world today, illustrating the states devoid of all moral impulse, 
without power to overcome any passion, absolutely a prey to all the 
conflicting elements within and around them. There are other natures 
in whom saint-like qualities preponderate, who do not experience an 
unworthy thought. Where is the law of science or the scheme of any 
theology, other than we are announcing, that can explain the discrep- 
ancy betAveen these two states; what opportunity is given, in time or 
eternity, by any other system than this, to reconcile one man's good- 



50 THE SOUL; 

ness, that seems to be born in liim, and the infamy of another, that 
seems to be born in him, with the Infinite love and goodness? Ac- 
counting the state of purity and perfection in expression as something 
man has won from within the Soul, the moral excellence as a height 
that the others will win, that all others will have opportunity to attain 
just as great a height, just as absolute a victory, the present seeming 
inequalities in moral states are no longer hopeless. If we did not 
know that the child would grow to become a man, how helpless and 
devoid of hope would infancy seem I When we declare, therefore, that 
every step of expression in life is a step toward victory, does it not 
teach that those who condemn and censure, in an individual sense, have 
not outgrown the condition which they condemn and censure? If one 
sees a man who is a murderer or a criminal of any kind, one may pity 
the state of the criminal, one may say he has not outgrown hatred, mal- 
ice, and revenge, but unless one has hatred, malice, and revenge, one 
can by no means wish to visit upon him that which he has visited up- 
on others. 

As life goes on there is no need to point to what is highest; the 
Isaints, martyrs, and philosophers put to death, the teachers of human 
(history and the Messiahs who have been crucified, illustrate the highest 
thought of human conquest, and each state that is less than that is 
still a state that ultimately tends toward it. When we are asked: Do 
you declare then that it is necessary for all states of expression to be 
experienced by all Souls? We answer unqualifiedly: 

That which is necessary for oxe Soul 

IN ITS course of expression through matter is necessary for all. 

It could not be made necessary for one unless for all. There 
would be moral chaos. 

The feminine in all possible states of woman's life, the masculine 
in all possible states of man's life; and the true test of victory is in the 
fact that, not only is there no condemnation, but that like John Bunyan, 
who, on seeing a convict being borne to the place of execution, said: 
*'But for the grace of God there goes John Bunyan". Or like Wilber- 
force, who said he never saw a criminal but he thought it might have 
been himself. Or like the highest prophets and teachers who endeavor 
to aid the unfortunate, do not insist upon condemning them. There 
is a sort of knowledge that it might have been one's self. Do not think 
that the state of being without sin is not won. 

It is not our province to declare in what state any human being is. 
You will see some lives that seem to illustrate the highest moral growth 
today, and tomorrow they may be found under a cloud of human weak- 



ITS EMBODUIENTS. 51 

ness and human censure; they fall, as it is termed, into temptation. 
There are no elementaries nor personal demons in the upper or lower 
air lurking around to tempt mankind. Temptation is the natural con- 
sequence of this involution in matter, and is the selfishness of man's 
human nature; the triumph over it is that which at last overcomes self. 

The flaming sword suspended at the gateway of Eden, that Adam 
and Eve could not return, was the sword of conscience, the awakened 
conscience, which prevents the Soul from returning again into the 
Eden state, the state of innocence. That which each must do, having 
entered the pathway of experience and knowledge, is to find the heav- 
enly state in the final victory, and that final victory is in self-conquest. 

It must not be forgotten that in the general system of unfold- 
ment toward moral perfection in expression, there are false impres- 
sions and fictitious heights that are supposed to be real. There is no 
greater state of deformity than the state of supposed righteousness in 
the individual, we mean the, "I am holier than thou." What the phys- 
ical giant is without intellectual and moral growth, what the intellect- 
ual giant is without goodness or virtue, so is the giant of self-rio-hteous- 
ness, the typical scribe and Pharisee, the hypocrite, he who removes 
his garments lest they be contaminated by contact with the sinner; such 
is the self-righteous. Make no mistake, even that pride has its fall. 
Sometimes you witness that those who assume the greatest virtue are 
the soonest under a cloud. Sometimes those who have a superficial 
consciousness of being good are put to the profoundest test, and their i/ 
goodness is found to be only on the surface. True goodness is so sim- 
ple, so humble, so childlike, so divine, so beyond all compare, that it is 
^lot ^ware,jiQrJbx>.astful. The true moral victor, who cannot sin, avoids 
not the sinner; but uplifts and strengthens him who errs. Only 
in this triumph does moral perfection become complete, after all the 
stages of struggle and attainment, when the world is overcome. 

It will be well to remember that each separate state is conquered 
by knowing it, then by knowing it is not a real victory, The thesis 
might seem to be that theySoul conquers matter by yielding to it, the 
antithesis is that the Soul conquers matter by knowing that yieldino' 
to it is not the real victory, 

But enough has been said in this lesson to show, that each Soul 
enters expression in human embodiments in the most infantile state 
possible on earth; for all states are experienced by all Souls; and that 
each Soul in dual existence, the masculine and feminine, is always ex- 
pressing similar states at the same time. That there are three dis- 
tinct general degrees of achievement: the physical, the mental, and 
the moral. Each of these degrees has its seeming and its real victory. 



52 THE SOUL. 

The false. 

First: The false physical strength, accompanied by pride of phys. 
ical conquest. 

Second: Intellectual power and achievement as a finality. 

Third: A fictitious moral strength, self-righteousness. 

The weakness of physical strength, the fallacy of mere intellect- 
ual power, and the downfall of self-righteousness, are reactions. 

The true. 

First: Victory over the physical. 

Second: Conquest over the intellectual. 

Third: True goodness, the ultimate moral triumph over the 
world. 

For each of these degrees and states, (as well as the reactions) 
many successive embodiments are necessary, until the final victory. 

The next lesson will be a continuation of this subject: Embodi- 
ments in human life. 



FOURTH LESSON. 

THE EMBODIMENT OF THE SOUL 
IN HUMAN FORM. 

(CONTINUED.) 

You have been taken, in a general sense, through all the expres- 
sions in human life in the three degrees: the first being the expressions 
of physical contact and of conquest over the physical; the next gener- 
al degree being the intellectual, or mental, victory; and the third that 
of spiritual conquest; which is, of course, the realm of moral triumj^h. 
In each of these degrees there is an interblending; the intellectual be- 
ginning before the physical ceases to dominate, and the spiritual be- 
ginning before the intellectual and physical entirely cease their su- 
premacy; so that there are in the world ahvays, at the same time, illus- 
trations of each of these states. For in the very beginnings there were 
illustrations of spiritual states from those who accompanied the Souls 
first to find expression here. Thus all have before them, if theywill 
read aright, illustrations of the entire book of human life; each hu- 
man life representing one of the embodiments, and all existing on the 
earth forming an illustration of the conditions that must be experienced 
or expressed by each Soul. So if it were possible for you to divide 
the existing states of human life into classes, or those expressing un- 
foldment in distinct degrees, you would find some are in states re^^re- 
sentingmore physical than intellectual or mental expression; you would 
find others in states representing more mental than physical and spir- 
itual expression; and you would find, though those are much more 
rare, other lives in states representing spiritual triumph. These all il- 
lustrate the different conditions of human existence. 

The lines of life that reach toward the highest expression, as we 
said before, are impulsions from the Soul. The expressions fall short 
of that by contact with matter, which, of course, is less than the Soul; 
so whatever there is that is imperfect in matter, for the time prevents 



54 THE SOUL; 

that perfect light from being revealed; but the whole lesson of em- 
bodiments is the overcoming of these material conditions. If, there- 
fore, the line of life in the Soul is the overcoming of matter through 
the adverse conditions that are found upon any planet, then all Souls 
that approach that planet, being equally perfect, must encounter the 
same obstacles. 

Many object to the proposition that all Souls must pass through 
similar states. But if all are not required to pass through them, why 
are any? If it is necessary for one it must be as necessary for all others. 
As life exists here why have its various discrepancies and inequalities 
never been explained in any other way than through the systems of 
teaching that include various states of expression, or embodiments? 

When travelers ascend the Alps they expect to encounter glaciers, 
they expect to go down into ravines, they expect to overcome the dif- 
ficult passages met by their predecessors; all this is prepared for in 
their ascent; they perform the journey for the purpose of beholding 
the splendor at the top. When the Soul expresses itself in a culmi- 
nation, it is that perfect degree that is sought in that direction; the 
stages between the beginning in that line and that of the genius, or 
the culmination in that line, are stages of overcoming obstacles. Ob- 
stacles being thus incident to physical existence, they are found here. 
Every thing in existence has some adequate cause, or purpose, there is 
some solution for it, and to find that solution is the great object of 
life. 

It does not create serpents because the teacher discovers them and 
explains the way to overcome them, and the antidote to their poison; 
nor does it create murderers because we can explain why they exist. 
Man finds these conditions in life, as the naturalist finds the life and 
nature of the insect, the serpent or whatever other objects nature holds, 
that each may be traced to its legitimate cause, and thereby man may 
gain knowledge which he di^ not have before; so what the life here is 
for is to overcome the conditions of evil, not to make them; of course 
if they are encountered in contact with matter, matter itself holding 
sway, blinding, as it does, with the human senses, then each step is to the 
vanquishment of that which blinds; so there is reconciliation to every 
imperfect condition in which human beings find themselves. If some 
seem to be perfect in certain directions it is because they have ripened 
in other states of individual expression. If others are degraded in 
some direction it is because they have not yet had experience in the 
ways that the former have. 

There is not as great a difference between those in the lowest or 
most degraded states and the average present state of humanity, (or 
even its highest state) as there is between the present state of mankind 



ITS EMBODIMENTS. 55 

and the state of an angel. Compared to the angels who is there that 
could escape condemnation? who is there that is not angry? who is 
there that does not deal falsely with his fellow man? 

Whatever may be the aversion existing in the mind toward, or 
the growth beyond, individual expression of any of the states of degra- 
dation which may exist in the world, it is evident that their solution is 
in the state or degree of expression in each individual, and if one has 
advanced very far beyond such conditions they afford no subject for 
condemnation, but rather of commiseration. 

The power, therefore, that enables man to know that when the an- 
gel triumphs the states of obliquity are overcome, and that through 
the line that leads to expression in art, in music, in poesy, in philoso- 
phy, in everything, victory is alone when perfection is attained, is su- 
preme in that which is called man's moral sense. "When any passion, 
any appetite, or any benighted condition is overcome, that is victory 
over the senses; when the knowledge of self-righteousness is overcome 
it is the victory over the most abject form of selfishness. The high- 
er the attributes claimed the lower seems to be the state of deviation 
from that height. The ignorant man professing no knowledge of 
moral law, has, in that sense, not reached the state of accountability. 
That begins when the first glimmerings of conscience come. This 
struggle to overcome the outward self that the spirit may triumph, 
that the Soul may be recorded, is the beginning of moral responsibility. 
Violence against a criminal, who has no adequate moral perception of 
his crime, is not far removed from the crime he has committed. He 
who liates the hater, which the murderer is, only displays the state of 
murder in a little different manner. 

Was it not Christ who said: "He who is angry with his brother 
hath already committed murder in his heart"? There are many peo- 
l^le who are called murderers who have no murder in their hearts, and 
many who are not called murderers who have. Thus the real differ- 
ence between crime and, so called, goodness is not so wide as one im- 
agines from any present state of human unfoldment. The nations 
that sanction and make the most gigantic preparation for war, to be 
ready if an opportunity offers, (and some of them eagerly seek that op- 
portunity) cannot be said to be far removed from the outlaw who, for 
individual gain, goes out and slays his kind; one is national the other 
is individual. 

Those in other conditions may not know that in a state where 
physical violence is the highest law of being there can be no moral re- 
sponsibility, nor moral perception; it is, after all, only when the moral 
law is beginning to be the law of life that responsibility begins. The 
man who slays, not knowing that killing is forbidden by the moral 



56 THE SOUL; 

law, cannot be held amenable to the moral law as he who does it 
knowing that it is forbidden. Remnants are to be traced in each in- 
dividual mind or life of those conditions, in which the highest human 
state was one of violence and crime, and physical violence toward 
criminals; when the moral perception sets in, the states of physical vi- 
olence become immoral, for the simple reason that the moral law teaches 
a higher and better method, not only of redressing wrong but of teach- 
ing the wrong doer. 

The perception of the moral law, and the appreciation of these 
principles are slow and gradual in the minds of the people; but the 
world waits long for all fulfillments, and the average human life is 
far from its highest victory, since each one criticises and condemns 
with violence a different kind of violence in another. 

The general mind is prompted to say: oh, I cannot believe that 
■every one must pass through all degrees of degradation! But that 
which would be degradation to a higher stage of expression is not so 
to that state which knows nothing higher. The present expressions 
of degradation are what each has passed through when not yet aware 
of its import. The awakening comes when one already begins to rise 
above it. One might as well despise the state of childhood and never 
expect any human being to be horn in any other condition than that 
of manhood and womanhood. Each one must experience every fault, 
failing, and foible, until they are overcome, the disgrace is not in the 
thing itself, but in a condition which knows of wrong and still con- 
tinues in it; but even this is another state of childhood, like the wil- 
fulness of the half grown boy or girl, not yet arrived at the estate of 
manhood or womanhood, but feebly imitating the wisdom not yet 
possessed. But we have observed that the greatest philanthropists, the 
most fully rounded natures, those, of course, who have overcome all 
temptation in a given direction, are the most lenient toward the states 
of crime; this is because they can not only perceive the difference in 
states as an explanation of crime, but they are beyond any possible 
condition of temptation; and as consciousness of temptation in a sim- 
ilar direction is often the cause of the hatred of an offender, so he who 
censures his fellow man who errs, instead of pitying him, unwittingly 
betrays that he may have in his heart the germ of possible temptation 
in the same direction. 

The various experiences in human existence, of prosperity, sor- 
row, pain, poverty, riches, power, bondage, etc., are different tests ap- 
plied to the different stages of growth, as well as for the growth it- 
self. The finely wrought metal is thoroughly tempered and put to the 
most crucial tests; when it is impervious it is pronounced perfect. 
The ship clad in an armor of steel in which there is a single flaw will 



ITS EMBODIMENTS. 57 

disappoint those who passed it or sent it out to sea, that flaw will 
prove its ruin. It is, therefore, in all the intricate ways and windings 
of human existence, when human beings feel the safest, and are hedged 
around with social, moral, and theological armor, that the temptation 
finds them; when it conquers them it simply proves that the victory 
in that direction has not been complete. 

We know of a very philanthropic clergyman, in England, who, in 
order that he may sympathize with the state of the prisoner, locks him- 
self up with the criminals and shares their food and lodging. This is 
about as absurd as for a man to be hung for murder, who has not com- 
mitted murder, that he may know how a murderer feels. The state of 
the murderer is in the heart; one cannot take the place of the crimi- 
nal unless he is in a state of crime. He may endure, physically, Avliat 
the criminal is called upon to do, but he has the armor with which to 
do it: the armor of innocence, so that which is a penalty to the crimi- 
nal, is simply the heroism of self-appointed martyrdom to him who 
shares the dungeon but has not the darkness of guilt. 

One must not mistake that which is transiently noble, and seem- 
ingly generous, for that which is real nobility and self-abnegation. 
This great moral chaos, where embodiments are thrown into existence, 
in which is illustrated all the complexity of man's moral being, is, nev- 
ertheless, governed by rules more absolute, by laws more unyielding 
than any laws that govern the physical realm. The degrees of moral 
growth are degrees not only of conquest over temptation, but of con- 
quest of the self which is the physical arbiter of man's destiny. That 
self which you are taught to cultivate in physical existence, and which 
in some material and mental states you must cultivate, is the very self 
that you finally have to overcome. Just as in arithmetic you learn 
certain propositions and combinations of numbers which are valuable, , 
but when you pass on to algebra you cease to use them, they are no 
longer valuable, you have learned that which is better; and in the 
higher branches of geometry you have still greater triumph, methods 
far superior with which to express and to solve the problems present- 
ed. In like manner this physical self, which is first nurtured and has 
its place in the primitive stages of expression, must afterward be over- 
come, superseded. 

That which supplies the physical energy is not to give any honor 
nor any aggregation of power to the one possessing it, (any more than 
treasures of gold or other material possession) but in its highest use is 
a Divine bestowment. Thus the moral law is thrust upon man's out- 
ward nature, in exact opposition to that nature, to be afterwards recon- 
ciled to it by overcoming, and bending the material part to the uses of 
the spirit. We have illustrated this by the first states of existence, in 



58 THE SOUL. 

which the victory of physical strength, that which constitutes the phys- 
ical possessions, is power. When the moral nature enters there is a 
perception that weakness ought to be protected. The greatest evi- 
dence of human advancement today, is to be found under the Christian 
idea that the weak are to be protected against the strong. 

Once more let us refer to those states of superficial moral growth 
wherein there are flaws, chief est of which is the flaw of self-praise; self- 
righteousness. This pride of excellence in any moral direction is the 
greatest flaw. As much greater than the pride of physical strength or 
intellectual power, as the moral nature is greater than the physical 
strength or the intellectual power. Therefore it is not strange that in 
the midst of all the words of gentleness and encouragement spoken by 
Jesus to those who were condemned and despised by men, that His 
words were of a rebuking nature toward the self-righteous, those who 
considered themselves the judges of others; the "scribes and Phari- 
sees, hypocrites," representing the typical lovers of virtue in them- 
selves; the state which scorned anything else than its own standard of 
excellence. The moral law puts to the severest test such states of 
supposed virtue, in which the letter of the law is the rule for human 
action. He who conforms to the letter of the law is considered a 
good man, Avhile he Avho, sometimes disobeying the form of the law, 
most manfully struggles against temj^tation and Anally overcomes it, 
is, nevertheless, censured and condemned. Such a state is often not 
considered a success in human life, but in the kingdom of the spirit 
each step toward self-conquest, in the sense of overcoming^ not only the 
tendency to temptation but the possibility of it, is a step of victory, 
and that is moral attainment. 

In all the states, however complicated, that human life may be, it 
must be remembered by each that the highest possible states are those 
toward which the human race, as a whole, is tending, as represented 
by the highest in each individual. 

There is repetition and reiteration of many of these points, be- 
cause we desire to make clear the solution of many of the difficult 
problems in man's moral condition, for here is the principle struggle, 
and here the final victory. 

There are four general states of expression in connection with 
man's relation to all moral propositions; and as many embodiments in 
each state as there are varieties of conditions in the human race. 

First: Unconsciousness of the moral law, and therefore no re- 
sponsibility in connection with it. 

Second: Consciousness of the moral law, but inability to resist 
temptation. Here is the beginning of resjDonsibility. 



ITS EMBODIMENTS. 59 

Third: A false height, a Pharasaical "I am holier than thou." 
Which does not commit an offense because it is condemned^ and be- 
cause temptation is not in that direction. Here is the gravest respon- 
sibility. 

Fourth: The victory over the offense through victory over the 
temptation, and, consequently, the victory over self-praise and lauda- 
tion. The triumph of moral law. 

As previously noted and emphasized, the states of expression 
which include no knowledge of the moral law, are states of physical 
expression merely; and, like the states of infancy in personal embod- 
iments, include no responsibility. The one hope for such conditions 
must forever be included in the term, growth; expression in further 
embodiments until the higher nature can be expressed. 

The second stage, being more complicated, is the more perplex- 
ing; but it calls for the higher degree of charity. The awakened 
glimmerings of moral perception, are not the full growth of moral 
power, nor even the half growth, any more than the boy half grown is 
a man; but very often this moiety of growth is mistaken for full man- 
hood. 

The third stage, or false height, is even more difficult to meet. 
To the individual it seems like the real height, but has forever been 
revealed as the false one. To have charity for the individual and 3'et 
to tear the mask from this false condition, is only in the power of the 
most exalted lives, the highest teachers. Any measure of self-praise 
or self-Qjratulation, of thinkino^ or acting^: "I thank God that I am not 
as other men" is a portion of the evidence of this third condition. 

The second and third states express the general condition of man- 
kind morally. 

The fourth stage needs no elaboration: a state alsolutely free from 
moral obliquity, and absolutely free from self-praise or even self-con- 
sciousness, is an ideal, and yet a surpassingly real, state; a divine ex- 
pression. 

AYe pass on, from the usual individual lines of embodiments, to 
those exceptional lives, who seem to be here for an especial purpose; 
who come as some vara avis in terris, to astonish the world with their 
brilliancy. These are embodied Souls, perhaps from other planets; 
alien to the earth, but are sent here on some errand of experience for 
themselves, which includes, also, a lesson to those embodied on the 
earth. Sometimes they are in advance; and the world looks on in 
amazement at their achievements; sometimes they are Nemeses, and 
the people to Avhom they come do not know the true nature of their 
visitation, but ages afterward it is revealed. 



GO THE SOUL 



Across the interstellar spaces there is spiritual, as well as magnet- 
ic, sympathy between planets; and if the earth, or any nation thereof, 
has arrived at the condition needing an illustration of the life that is 
not upon the earth at the time, or if a force is needed that no life upon 
earth is qualified to give, or if a Nemesis is required, then one takes a 
pilgrimage from the planet next in advance to show what is needed, 
and to illustrate the power that is beyond. This explains those pecul- 
iar embodiments that seem to thrust themselves in upon human life, 
and which seem to be unaccounted for. 

Then there are conditions in life where you will see individuals 
who seem to be made up of fragments; who never do anything contin- 
uously; who cannot persist in anything as a pursuit; who seem to have 
ability in many directions, but no tenacity of purpose. One of these 
lives would seem to be adapted to commerce for a while, then he would 
be a lawyer, then he would be a book maker, and finally a teacher, or a 
clergyman, then he would turn speculator; these are the gathering up of 
some of the fragments of embodiments that were not finished. These 
fragmentary states are like threads. You may have seen work that 
was done on some of those ancient hand-looms, where there was not a 
continuous thread but the ends of the woof were left to be afterward 
carefully gathered up, or cut off, to make the warp and woof complete. 
Those fragmentary and erratic lives are like the broken threads, hay- 
ing this intention; that they are taking up those threads of other em- 
bodiments to carry them forward to complete the fabric of life. You 
may have in mind some who seem to possess peculiar traits, each of 
which are wonderful, in their way, who have intelligence and ability 
in almost every direction, yet no continued purpose; they are illustra- 
tions of this state to which we refer. Sometimes these erratic lives 
suddenly change when they reach a certain state; when these frag- 
ments are outworked and discarded, then the new line, whatever it 
may be that is to be taken up, will be carried on to completion. 

INIany embodiments beginning expression in one direction turn, in 
later years, toward something entirely different. The child and the 
youth may seem to have tendencies that point in one direction, but ma- 
ture life will find them wholly changed. We call this an over-lapping; 
where the previous embodiment had not finished expression in a cer- 
tain line. You will see this illustrated in precocious children, whom 
fond parents and friends think will j^rove remarkable in some given 
direction; when childhood is past, the gift in the direction of the 
precocity ceases; parents and friends are disaj^pointed; they had built 
hopes and expectations on their early promise, but it proved to be fic- 
titious only. All these instances are unaccounted for, except in the 
usual attempt to account for them by saying: the child's gifts have 



77W EMBODIMENTS. Gl 

"been spoiled by doting parents and unwise friends; but that which is 
perfect and genuine cannot be perverted in any way. 

If any gift is to serve a purpose in an embodiment it is fully ox- 
presssed, but if it lias served its purj^ose in a preceding embodiment it 
sometimes flashes like a parting gleam of light upon the consciousness 
in the next embodiment, to show that it has been, and then gives place 
to something else. We have known some who as children were very 
miserly, (this is not usual with children) who seemed to grasp money 
very closely, yet who entirely outgrow the tendency in later years. 
We have even known the very extreme of generosity in childhood, 
succeeded by avarice in later years. Oftentimes the things that were 
prized and looked forward to in childhood, one wholly rejects in ma- 
ture years. The solution of the over-lapping is, that there is a line of 
expression to be finished in a given direction, and when that is fin- 
ished, even if it is in chiMliood, the embodiment then takes up the line 
of that expression for which it is really intended. 

These instances must serve not only to illustrate the frequent and 
intimate relation of an embodiment to a previous one, but they bear 
us directly on to the next step in our lesson: that of Reminiscence. 

Reminiscence differs from memory 
as possession differs from the shadow of it. 

Memory is simply the register of passing events. Reminiscence 
is the essence of life; the fragrance or perfume of the flower of exist- 
ence, whose fruition is in the Soul. Few lives, who are at all prepared 
to think on this subject, have not some reminiscence; none have the 
evidence of memory; some odor of a flower, some strain of music, the 
sight of a face upon the street, a conversation with some individual, 
who may be a stranger, the glimpse of a castle, will call up singular 
reminiscences unto such as we have referred to. So subtle, yet potent, 
are these, that were they fashioned, as they have been by poets and 
novelists, into song or story, they would form the soul of all the ro- 
mance in the world. 

All Oriental prophets, and ancient scholars; many of the Grecian 
philosophers; modern writers of exalted romance; and poets of every 
age, have been aware of reminiscences of previous embodiments, or 
have made the heroes and heroines of their poems or novels to possess 
them. Pythagoras, being far advanced in embodiments, could per- 
ceive what he was in his previous existence, and that he did not finish 
the line of teaching that he intended; he had foretold in that previous 
embodiment that he would come as a teacher. All this was clearly 
stated in his teachings. He gave his followers to understand that he 



62 THE SOUL; 

had reminiscences of long lines of life through which he had been 
advancing to reach the knowledge he had attained. Brilliant in sci- 
ence, as well as in morals and philosophy, the world accepts his perfect 
propositions in mathematics, but forgets his systems of ethics and 
philosoj^hy. Plato's divine "Cosmos" included all past as well as 
present and future expressions. AVordsworth in his "Ode on Immor- 
tality; Goethe and Schiller, and a score of others, illustrate the knowl- 
edge of reminiscence in the divine art of poesy, in the perception of 
it. "What other light than this divine reminiscence gleamed in upon 
that child, Bettina Yon Arnem, to make her know that Goethe was the 
genius of the hour? To whom other than the princess of a sacred 
past, in a kingdom not of earth, could Schiller have traced the "Mys- 
tery of Reminiscence"? George MacDonald in his novel, "Portent," 
has distinctly made the hero and heroine know that they were upon 
the earth before. It is a sad, weird tale, but it serves to illustrate 
the truth of reminiscence. 

There are many hundreds of lives upon the earth today who have 
rem.iniscences. Perhaps there are none in this room who, if they 
spoke from within, have not felt at some time a reminiscence of a 
previous existence, as though somewhere before they had seen, or felt, 
or experienced that which is transpiring here and now; a clasp of the 
hand, an intonation of voice, a flash, a gleam, a sunset glow, enough 
to reveal the heretofore. 

Among many thousands of similar instances we cite one. We know 
a lady who never signs her name to a document, even an ordinary let- 
ter, without being siezed Avith violent trembling. She always said, long 
before these teachings Avere known to her, that she felt that she had 
signed her name consenting to a terrible crime or injustice in some 
past time; perhaps to a death warrent, j^ossibly that of her dearest 
friend; and that it had been a life long sorrow to her in that past time. 
When we consider what those past times were it is no wonder that 
sometimes there is hesitation, and trembling unaccountable, when 
one is performing an ordinary act. It is no wonder that sometimes 
a reminiscence, as of sudden sorrow or of joy, would come upon 
one. What would be the feeling of the embodiment following such 
a life as that of Mary Stuart, unfortunate, not without ambition, but 
eighteen years a prisoner in the various dungeons and castles of Eng- 
land to serve the ambition of the royal household? If there were 
sometimes tears unexplained, a reminiscence of sadness that had no 
excuse for being, it would not be remarkable. Sometimes a babe 
comes sighing into a glad mother's arms, and it is only after months 
and years of love-light, and smiles, and kisses, that the child is won 
from its pre-existent sadness. Sometimes there are smiles and joy 



ITS EMBODIMENTS. 63 

wholly unaccountable: since they are often depicted in the counte- 
nance where there is no outward occasion for being joyous, in the laugh- 
ing eyes that reveal in every expression delight and gladness, in the 
hearts that are glad and cannot be depressed or made sorrowful by the 
experiences of daily life. You will see hearts brave, cheerful, and 
strong, who will say: "Well, this is not so bad, it might have been 
worse:" who turn persistently to the light instead of the shadow; hav- 
ing either conquered the shadow or are luminous with strong reminis- | 
cence of the great light of a joy that was theirs. ~~*" ^ 

The state of reminiscence does not begin with the first, nor yet 
with the second degrees of expression. It is a state of intuitive per- 
ception of the possessions within the Soul, but like all attainments has 
its shadowy and its real side. We may illustrate this by citing the 
one who is ascending a mountain: while he is in the valley, or even 
during the ascent, when he is struggling, entangled in the woods, and 
briers, and 'mid rocks, or descending into valleys betv\'ecn the hills, he 
cannot see the path by which he has ascended, nor yet the way before 
him, but when he comes to one height he can look back along the 
mountain and see the devious path by which he has ascended. He al- 
so has a glimpse of the way before him, of the higher height to be at- 
tained, and once more plunges into the valley, or ravine, or tangled 
maze, to ascend. So at a certain height, or a certain degree of unfold- 
ment in human existence, glimmerings of reminiscence begin: the 
consciousness of having lived before, of having suffered with the suf- 
ferer, of having traveled along the shaded human waj^s. 

As those teachers like Pythagoras and Plato, and the shining 
groups of minds clustering, like stars, around some prophet of old, gave 
evidence of their individual reminiscences, so, in degree, many whom 
you meet today in the average state of intellectual and spiritual life, if 
closely questioned, would say: "Yes I feel often as though I had lived 
before; I have many times a sort of reminiscence of having had a pre- 
vious existence here." Although this may be laughed at by friends, 
and frowned upon as a dream, or a freak of the imagination, still when 
you take up the complete web of human life its warp and woof will 
finally be found enwoven of the lines of these reminiscences. 

At certain points in human progress each Soul looks back over 
these lines of life and is aware. Poets and artists are privileged to 
dwell in what is called the realm of the imagination, and they are not 
criticised if they picture two lovers who think they have met and 
loved before. They are not censured if on the top of some ancient cas- 
tle or ruin there shall suddenly come into the mind of the dreamer, as 
depicted in the poem or picture, that it is all familiar, that he has been 
there before. 



G4 THE SOUL: 

■' * 

Poets, and artists, and writers, in the realm of tlie imagination, 
are supposed to liave an especial sesame to enter the mystic and shad- 
OAvy regions. All references to pre-existence, and reminiscence, are 
supposed to be poetic license; but if poets did not strike a chord in hu- 
man life that Avould vibrate in sympathy with their thoughts how 
could they thus write? The thrilling, the deep, the unexplainable, is 
oftenest that which is founded in the highest truth. If this principle 
w^ere not in the upper air, if it did not belong to one of the inner 
chambers of the spirit, it could not be thought of. People do not ab- 
solutely invent ideas of this kind, they are borne into the consciousness 
from some inner realm. In ordinary lives, deeper subjects sometimes 
take possession and there begins this line of reminiscence, which, how- 
ever, relates to the deeper consciousness, and which is very wisely veiled 
from the ordinary vision: since if people were busily engaged in re- 
membering what they were, they would not fulfill the present duties 
and objects of life, i There is just sufficient of reminiscence in the 
world to offer as proof when any teaching is distinctly on that subject. 
Taking the whole world, and the whole of human histor)^, the evidences 
of reminiscence are as complete and as numerous as any other factor 
in human life. Nor is it possible to take from this rare lily of exist- 
ence its attribute of being a flower. Reminiscence would not be what 
its name implies if it were more than an atmosphere, a wonderful back- 
ground into and through which the tones and tints of life are to be 
wrought. 

We again take up the illustration of the traveler, and follow him 
to the higher heights, fore-gleams as well as after-gleams are on those 
shining pinnacles. Can any one doubt what realm w^e are entering? 
These heights constitute the realm of sages, teachers, prophets, and, 
finally, of Messiahs. 

The state of terfect kemixiscence is also 

THE state of PEOPHECY. 

We have now reached that point of our subject which relates to 
spiritual existence, or what is commonly known as "The Spirit Life," 
"The Spiritual World," etc, etc, in connection with Embodiments. 

Spirit is the breath of life from the Soul 

INTO matter, for EXPRESSION. 

Each Embodiment is the result, in expression, of a Soul-breath> 
which is its sj^irit. 

The Spirit of each Embodiment expresses a personality, but not a 
complete entity, the entity being the Soul. 



ITS EMBODIMENTS. 65 

The spiritual ' existence of each embodiment is expressed in the 
earthly form (of that embodiment) and in the spirit state that succeeds 
the form. Or, to be more explicit, the expression in each embodiment 
includes the earthly and spiritual states, the latter being the continua- 
tion or fruition of each embodiment. As the seed planted in the soil has 
a certain growth beneath the surface of the ground, a fuller growth 
above the surface, and fruition there, so the spirit has the fruition (as 
spirit, not as Soul) of its embodiment in the state which follows the 
separation from the body. Whatever is the intention, theme, or line 
of experience or expression in any embodiment that is, in a spiritual 
sense, carried forward into the realm of spirit, each embodiment yield- 
ing its spiritual harvest. 

There must be expressions and experiences in all the spiritual 
states belonging to earth, (or any planet) as there are in all the materi- 
al states, to complete the full measure of the Soul's expression here. 
In the most primitive earthly states, or those nearest to matter, the 
spiritual expressions that follow each embodiment are very feeble, and, 
therefore, the spiritual existences are of short duration, and are not 
connected with any conscious moral or spiritual activities; but in la- 
ter embodiments, when the mind and spirit begin to be active in ex- 
pression, the spiritual states which follow the earthly embodiments 
are, necessarily, more complete and full as the fruition of each embod- 
iment. 

Between each embodiment and the succeeding one is such period 
of time (viewing the subject from the human side) as is required for 
the spiritual expression or fruition of the preceding one. There is no 
haste, there is no delay; no imperfect or broken links in the entire 
chain. 

The human mind takes alarm at once at these teachings, and de- 
clares a loss of idenity if one embodiment is followed by another, and 
one spirit after another has expression. Herein we differ from that 
which is called reincarnation. There is no reincarnation; there is. 
another expression, and another, until all that is possible is expressed, 
here and in spirit life. Another embodiment is not a loss of identity y 
hut an added expression of identity. One may paint a picture today, 
another in a month or a year, and in two years may write a poem or a 
treatise on science; never losing, but adding to, his individual expres- 
sion. 

The entity is in the Soul. Identity is v^hatever is expressed from 
that Soul. One embodiment or one thousand cannot destroy the iden- 
tity nor the entity. As each form only expresses a portion of the spir- 
it that pervades it, so each spirit (of a Soul) only expresses a portion of 



66 THE SOUL 



the Soul. Do not mistake tlie spirit of an embodiment for the Soul: it 
is as fatal as to mistake the body for the spirit. 

Spiritualism reveals, as its name implies, a knowledge of the ex- 
istence of spirit, and the experiences after the decease of the mortal 
form of the spirit which possessed and pervaded that form. The spirit 
of each embodiment has existence in spirit life, and when the embodi- 
ment is a culmination in any direction, the spirit of that embodiment 
remains as a perfect portion of the entire expressions on earth. 
When the experiences are complete, each of these culminated expres- 
sions forms a portion of the entire expressions of the Soul. While the 
failures, as they are termed, all that has fallen short of perfection in 
any direction, form no part of the Soul possessions. 

The IlELATIO?^' OF THE SPIRIT TO THE SoUL 
IS AS THAT OF A SEGMENT TO THE WHOLE CIRCLE. 

The Soul includes all expressions and relations in all embodiments. 

The spirit of each embodiment is expressed as long in mortal 
and spiritual life as there is any call or demand for it. We mean by 
this: any duties that are unfinished, any ties that are formed and re- 
quire to be maintained, any outward, or material, belongings in which 
the spirit is concerned must be preserved. 

People say: I would not like to go into spirit life and not find 
my friends. If they are your friends you will find them, if they are 
not you would not wish to. All real ties are found to last in spiritual 
existence, and form a portion of the Soul's possessions. The larger 
sphere includes the smaller one. It does not detract from the relation 
of the moon to the earth because both revolve around the sun. Nor 
does it render the relation of the planets in the solar system any less 
important because the entire system, including the sun, revolves around 
a more distant central sun. 

Children leave their [parental homes to form other ties, of mar- 
riage and parentage, but are none the less children. One might as well 
suppose that the relations of life: parent and child, husband and wife, 
brother and sister, are blotted out by the Soul's relation to God. All 
are included in the Infinite Love. So this Soul-life must include all 
the relations and expressions of spirit, retaining the real and reject- 
ing the shadowy or unreal. 

The mother, whose child is left upon the earth, does not change 
her natural or spiritual relationship, she fills her function toward that 
child. When there is an added expression upon the earth, in another 
embodiment, it is after all possible duties have been filled toward the 
child; and that relation of mother and child, if it be real, is included 
as a portion of the Soul's treasures. 



ITS EMBODIMENTS. 67 

Generations pass, usually including from one to two hundred 
years, before another embodiment occurs, except in particular cases 
where the life has nearly reached a culmination. 

There are exceptional states in the expressions of every Soul, where- 
in the spiritual existence after an embodiment may be very brief, or 
very protracted, extending to one or two thousand years, or more; but 
the average is, as previously stated, about two hundred years. We could 
mention instances where those who have lived what they have con- 
sidered, unfinished lives, w^herein their work was not completed, and 
they have had a w^ish to take up their Avork again, have soon had ex- 
pression in another embodiment. We could mention instances, for il- 
lustrations, in which it was evident that one embodiment was nearly 
related to another, that the line of retrospect w^as complete, as in the 
case of Pythagoras. 

Strange messages from spirits, that have been mysterious to those 
receiving them are herein explained. A lady asking of a commu- 
nicating spirit for a certain spirit friend, received the answer: "He 
has gone on a voyage back to earth for the benefit of his Soul." 
Other answers, which were veiled, yet easily understood in the light of 
these teachings, have been given by spirits at various times, who could 
not explain the absence in their spirit states of certain ones whom 
they expected to meet. 

Reminiscences of previous embodiments do not exist in ordinary 
life on earth, nor in the spirit state following the ordinary life; there- 
fore it is not strange that mortals do not receive these teachings from 
spirits usually, for unless the earthly embodiment is ready to receive 
them, the sj^irit state following the embodiment will not reveal them. 
It is with spirits as with mortals: very few mortals know; but there 
are in each individual, in mortal and in sjDirit life, if the indications 
were carefully noted, certain flashes of reminiscence: we mean in such 
lives as have reached any degree of thought or intuition upon these 
and kindred themes. 

Each spirit enters, therefore, the spiritual existence with perfect 
freedom and safety; as far as personal existence and relations are con- 
cerned each must carry out, as spirit, the spiritual continuation of the 
line of mortal life. 

To the spirit of each embodiment there are no new beginnings in 
this spiritual state, unless those beginnings were included in the em- 
bodiment, even though veiled; but each spirit state is greater than the 
embodiment because the fruition of its line of expression. The spirit 
that has already started on earth in a line of moral excellence can- 
not change that moral excellence in spirit life; can only carry it to 
a degree of perfection in that line. The one, however, who has 



68 THE SOUL; 

made no conquest of temptation while in the earthly state, where 
temptation really exists, cannot win that victory in the spiritual state. 
So one who passes into the spiritual state of existence, passes only 
to the spiritual completion of the solution of the problems already 
commenced, not to a moral renovation; nor is that lack of moral vic- 
tory a state of active or aggressive evil in the spirit existence; it is an 
aggregation of weakness. Those shadowy states, frequently referred 
to in spirit messages, strongly pictured and typified, are not states of 
positive, active, aggressive, evil, but are states of negation. That 
which in earth life is positive, because fed by material and organic 
conditions, is spiritual imbecility. To be a murderer on earth is in 
spirit life to be a weakling. Those spirits having no knowledge of 
goodness have no spiritual power. All who have aims, aspirations, 
and exalted reflections in earthly life, pass on to spiritual states com- 
mensurate with them. 

No added embodiment is necessary until all obligations and 
duties belonging to the late embodiment are expressed and perfected. 

Where infants pass to the spiritual state there is a spiritual pur- 
pose to be served even by the transient earthly state. You often 
hear mediums describe the spirit as growing up in spirit life; such is 
really the case. In each embodiment the impulsion or expression, 
even though but commenced in the earthly form, is carried out in 
spiritual existence, for such embodiments are not intended to be per- 
fected here; in all cases where a child passes on, a double purpose is 
served. When a babe comes it is not always that it comes for expres- 
sion^ that little hour of life would not count as an expression; but the 
object is that something is wrought in the lives of its parents. These 
waifs that float into existence below, and linger but an hour or a year 
are not robbed. How stupendous would be the robbery if one human 
life were all they could have! 

There is no theory in religion or science, unless it includes that 
which we are teaching, that will explain why it is necessary for one 
man to live until he is eighty or ninety years of age and a babe to die 
before it is a week old, or before it is born. If it is said in reply, that 
the spirit state can supply all the lack of experience on earth, why not 
in all cases? Why must any grow old? 

We find that there are numberless ways in which Soul-life can be 
expressed, and each Soul can and does find absolute expression in all 
possible states of human existence, so the life of an hour or a moment 
may balance the life of four score or a century. Thus there is no 
loss, because in the great culminations of existence, just as in experi- 
ments in science, those states which are stepping stones, experiments- 
toward a result, are not counted, only the successes; so in all these 



ITS EMBODIMENTS. 69 

successive lines of embodiments, for every flickering life that goes 
out before one has time to know that it is here, there is always oppor- 
tunity and time to equalize and balance all; and whatever was unex- 
pressed, seemingly, finds expression; and the real intent of each em- 
bodiment is expressed. 

To have the whole of human experience one form must not only 
die when it is eighty, but one form must die before there is birth; 
the expressions and experiences include all possible states. The spirit 
state in each embodiment is included in the whole plan. Your spirit 
life, or spirit world, is not disturbed by these teachings. It is only 
provided with a diviner sense and recognition: is included in the lar- 
ger sphere of being. A knowledge which is far greater, and is en- 
compassed and surrounded by as much larger life than before, as the 
sun's light is brighter and more potent than that of the moon. 

Spiritualism without these lessons is as the moon revolving around 
the earth. In the moonlight of existence, limited by certain spiritual 
states, you may glow and shine after the state of earth, but when you 
find the source of the light of the spirit, it is this Soul-life which in- 
cludes all spiritual states and all human existence. Under its divine 
and solvent radiance you are not only reconciled to birth and death, but 
to any birth, and to the death that is in human life; you are recon- 
ciled to all different conditions in outward existence; to all those states 
in spirit life that are not provided for in theology, and that Spiritual- 
ism only touches lightly or not at all, and cannot explain, and cannot 
answer. This light is the only solution of the heretofore, and of 
those states far beyond spirit existence, in the realm we name angelic. 
Those differences also in spiritual conditions you know are ultimately 
all to be solved, but how, or in what way, has not been revealed except 
in this light of the Soul. 

Spiritual existence, as a rule, includes the period of time which 
would be required for the full perfection of the life on earth, and for 
the carrying forward of its purposes in spirit life. 

As there is approach toward the final culmination in embodiments 
on earth the spiritual harvest is riper before entering spirit life, so the 
interval of time between embodiments is much lessened, for as the em- 
bodiments approach the final culmination there is more rapid tendency 
to expression. It would not be surprising to you to know that where 
geniuses have been perfected in many ways and there are many lines 
of culminations coming together that the embodiments are much more 
rapid, that the earthly ties are less dominant as they are not needed, 
and that at last only the spirit prevails and the Soul seeks expression 
in its final states on earth. 



TO THE SOUL 



We have endeavored in this and the preceding lessons to impress 
upon yon tlie equality of all Souls, we have endeavored to impress np- 
on you the absolute justice of this laic of expression as applied to all 
Souls. We would like to impress upon you more fully that which 
should be the lesson, particularly to mortals in their present state, 
that not only everything is possible for each individual Soul, but that 
no Soul ever expressed any genius or splendid quality that all will not 
express. 

We would like to give encouragement to such as are athirst, seem- 
ingly restless and dissatisfied, that what is not attained ^\i\\ surely be 
won; and even though it may be valueless when it is attained, you 
must each accomplish it and find it out for yourself. Ko one can 
have expression for another. Even in the short space of one gen- 
eration the son never follows the admonitions of the father, unless the 
son is older than the father in expression, but if he is not older in ex- 
perience he will have" his own experience, whatever the admonition may 
be, and he soon gets it in life. No human life can have experience 
for another. One who has never experienced love cannot declare what 
it is, so that divine impulse, of love, must ultimately come into every 
life in all guises until the light of Soul-love is known. No one can 
tell what religion is, until a religious force is born within; others may 
call it a dream, enthusiasm, unreality; may have no interpretation 
wherewith to solve the sacred flame, but if it has been experienced it 
is understood. The same is true of poetry: many may write in the 
rhyme, or rhythm, or measure, of poetry who are not poets; but no one 
can understand the quality or essence of poetry unless he is a poet. 
This can be applied to music, to all attainments. Often that which 
one will throw away when it is won, proves by the desire of having it 
that it must be won; and each will be obliged to win for this experi- 
ence: the joy of conquest and the disappointment of it too. 

That w^hich allures and captivates man's ambition and deceives 
his conscience, is a false height from which he may, perhaps, perceive 
the real mountains upon which the true light shines afar off, but he 
must descend into the valleys to reach them. Man may build towers 
for observing the stars, but he cannot reach them by climbing to the 
top of the towers. So each toAver of pride, ambition, of false hope, or 
love, man will build; nay more than this: he may wear the laurel 
wreath and the wreath of bay, and prove what the greatest in the 
world have known for all the ages, that both of these bear more thorns 
than did the crown of thorns on the brow of Christ. 

Please also remember that it is not possible while one is measur- 
ing the deeps to recoil from them, nor for any to have had experience 
that all have not had, or that they must not have; it is not possible 



ITS EMBODIMENTS. 71 

for one height to have been attained or any beauty or perfection, how- 
ever fair they seem, or that fairest height of all, moral and spiritual 
perfection, exemplified in the greatest teachers, revealed in the loftiest 
minds of earth, that all will not one day attain. 

As, sometimes, one's past is a background against which one draws 
the contrast of the present with the past attainment, let your present 
imperfections be the background against which the light that is divine 
shall picture the future achievement in glorious and triumphant beau- 
ty; and then remember that that achievement, great and wonderful 
and perfect as it may be, will form but the stepping stone to that high- 
er height, that diviner glory which shall follow. 



FIFTH LESSON. 

THE REUNITED SOUL. 

INCLUDING PARENTAL SOULS AND 
KINDRED SOULS. 

Not alone is any Soul j^ushed out of the Celestial Heavens, out of 
the whiteness of the throne of God, to seek expression in material 
life. Even as the mother bird gently pushes her young from the par- • 
ent nest that they may learn to fly, but ever hovers near and dives be- 
neath spreading her wings to catch them if they fall, so the Infinite 
Mother Love watcheth the fledgelings of the skies. 

Not alone do Souls approach the earth. In all manifestations of 
nature there is association and groupings; atoms arranged in duads, 
triads, quadrads and quintads; the flora and fauna in species and fam- 
ilies. So groups of Souls pass from the Celestial State toward a solar 
system for expression. Archangels and Angels, of degrees adapted to 
the states of expression intended, accompanying them. 

In groups of one hundred and forty four thousand come Souls un- 
der charge of an Archangel. This is a Kabalistic and Messianic num- 
ber, is referred to in the vision of the Apocalypse in the New Testa- 
ment; it here refers to such Souls as approach the earth (or any planet) 
at any given time for expression. Other groups of Souls each number- 
ing one hundred and forty four thousand approach the earth, until all 
are embodied that the planet can ever perfect in its expression. This 
largest group is divided into smaller ones, the two smallest numbering 
one hundred and forty four Souls, and twelve Souls, resj^ectively. The 
group of twelve is called a Family of Kindred Souls, and is in charge 
of a Parental Soul, i. e.: a Soul having passed through the degrees of 
earthly expression and being, therefore, one of its angels. 

The number twelve is the mystical number, the sacred number of 
the ancients. The larger number, one hundred and forty four, twelve 



PARENTAL AND KINDRED SOULS. V3 

times twelve, expresses also a mystical meaning, and has relation to the 
Twelve Angels who, grouped in the angelic state, have charge of the 
twelve groups of Souls. One hundred and forty four thousand consti- 
tute all that come in a certain period of time and begin, approximate- 
ly, their lives together on the earth. One of these groups are those 
who first approach the earth and form, what is called, the "primal na- 
tion,'" the beginning. These take their primary lessons and pass on 
through the different steps of this life, taking the same steps at the 
same time, though scattered far and wide upon the earth. 

The indications of the relations of the groups is made manifest 
in the first nations of the earth, where tribes and nationalities held 
sway according to their physical states, and there the indications are 
very strong. The tribal rules of the primal nations, the absolute sway 
of the patriarchal form of government prove that the idea of the pa- 
rental Soul was recognized, that the one who has charge of the tribe is 
considered the superior. Sometimes this parental rule is represented 
by both man and woman. This patriarchal rule, and the harmony of 
the tribe and family, existing among primal nations is like the inno- 
cence of childhood, and is soon disturbed by the material selfishness 
that follows. 

There are periods of peace in the primal conditions of the na- 
tions of the earth, after that there is discord, striving, and Avarfare; 
the groups of Souls then have become dispersed into different nation- 
alities; the members of the same nation are no longer kindred, they 
quarrel in the same household. The typical Cain and Abel of Scripture 
are the typical aliens in the same household, not being kindred in Soul, 
expressing different stages of growth in connection with earth. These 
aliens are to be found in almost every household in any society or 
community. But for these illustrations, and the true causes of them, 
there never could have been Avars among the nations and families of 
earth. Souls become separated, they are no longer nations of the life 
of the Soul, but the nations of the body. 

The foregoing explains why the ties of relationship and the ties 
of consanguinity in the lower orders of human life are much stronger 
than they are in the intervening states, between the lower and higher 
orders, because the ties of consanguinity are the physical expression 
of what is termed affection. The first beginnings of strife are after 
the dispersion of the primal household or nation, and before the high- 
er or spiritual recognition begins. The kindred Souls have become 
dispersed and only gradually, Avith occasional glimpses and A'iA'id flash- 
es, do they come together in the same household or nation. They do 
not usually meet until in later embodiments Avhen there are great cri- 
ses or culminating periods on the earth. 



74 THE SOUL, 

Illustrations of these groups of kindred Souls, and their recogni- 
tion, are upon the earth now in great numbers, and are to be found in 
every period of human history. When you see in different portions 
of the earth, liyes spring up suddenly, ^vith natures thJit resemble one 
another, similar in thought, alike in purpose, having corresponding sym- 
pathy, you may know they are kindred Souls, and yet they may have 
never met in their earthly forms. There are those who appear and 
act together in emergencies. Take, for instance, bodies of reformers or 
groups of people who are. intent on carrying forward art or science; 
musical, artistic, scientific, patriotic lives, who are as brothers and sis- 
ters, yet do not belong to the same earthly parents. 

It has been observed by thoughtful minds very frequently, that 
poets and painters exist in certain countries and ages in groups. What 
constellations clustered around a certain period of time in Italy; the 
preraphaelite period, leading up to the wonderful age of art when 
there seemed to be poured out a new spirit upon the earth, an age 
created by the group of geniuses that clustered around imperial Rome. 
Then followed the Renaissance. In poetry also there was the Grecian 
age; afterward was the Dantean age, and later the Elizabethean age 
of poetry and literature; all these ages are so named because of the 
constellations of minds that seemed born for the same epoch, and cre- 
ated the art, or literature, of their period. Who other than a group 
of kindred Souls could have thrilled Germany with such light as final- 
ly clustered around Goethe and Schiller in the small court at Weimar? 

When any great movement is in the world, like temperance, like 
the abolition of slavery, like anything that enlists the attention of 
philanthropists, there spring to the surface workers in that move- 
ment, seemingly already prepared though they dwell in different lands. 
Around the Reformation there clustered a certain galaxy of minds 
that seemed to have been made ready for the occasion and the work; 
were one in the fraternity of the Soul. 

In matters of scientific discovery or invention it usually occurs 
that more than one mind, perhaps several, make the discovery or in- 
vention at the same time, and there is scarcely any nation that does not 
claim for her favorite scientific mind the honor of each discovery, prov- 
ing that many think in the same direction at the same time. Each is as 
much the author of the discovery as any other, but the friends of each 
frequently have accused the others of plagiarism in ideas; in most cases 
this refutes itself, since none could know of the experiments leading 
to the discovery of the others. In the time of a great intellectual ep- 
och, like the period of the Platonists, there are those who are ready to 
rally around and receive the central thought. The teacher, like Socra- 
tes or Plato, represents the center of the group. The household or 



PAEEXTAL AND KINDRED SOULS. lb 

children of any particular light rally around their center as there are 
others who gather around other centers of art, science, philosophy, or 
religion; all in these groups are more closely united than those who 
are simply united by the ties of consanguinity, each recognizes that 
theirs is a larger brotherhood. 

These fraternities are observable in advanced states of human so- 
ciety, not in the lower states, as said before, because of the selfishness 
in external things that intervenes. In the higher states, when great 
themes or purposes enlist humanity, you will observe that there is a 
spontaneous fraternity formed among certain people for working out 
great moral purposes. This is why there are groups of reformers, groups 
of men of science, groups of artists. What greater evidence of these 
groups of Souls could be offered than that afforded in the high state 
of art revealed in the geniuses who gathered around the 2)eriod of time 
when Raphael was upon the earth? What greater evidence than when 
the poets of England followed one another in quick succession, and 
when they passed on left the earth almost bare and barren of poesy un- 
til a new generation of poets came into the world? What greater evi- 
dence than in the patriots, heroes, and statesmen, who rise with wonder- 
ful power of pen, or sword, or voice to fight for country; what great- 
er evidence than Italy; than Hungary; than Europe to day, Avhere 
not only individual groups, but constellations of groups, seem to ral- 
ly around the great movements that are upon earth? 

Even in ordinary states of earth-life, how easy it is among the mul- 
titude of people, if formality is withdrawn, to discover the attractions 
of each: artist seeks artist, poet seeks poet, the musician seeks his 
fellow harmonist, the convivial seeks one of his kind, men of trade 
and commerce confer together, and the butterflies, who hover near the 
gaudy blossoms of fashion and pleasure, are found at the shrine of 
their woiship. 

Frequently people in different stations in life associate mysteri- 
ously together. Sometimes a prince of royal blood finds his chosen 
companion in a peasant. The court, society, and all the world are scan- 
dalized, but the prince, m some subtle way, recognizes the fact that 
there is more spiritual sympathy and kinship between the peasant and 
himself than between himself and a whole line of his royal kinsmen. 
This kind of illustration extends in many ways into lines of thought 
that are most fascinating; sometimes in reading a book, one will recog- 
nize a kindred Soul in the author, although unknoAvn in person. 

If one were on the plane of Carlyle, but had never seen him, and 
if in perusing his works his sentiments would impress one more than 
any other writer, this Avould prove a kinship. If one understands 
another person and sympathizes with each aspiration, it is always evi- 



1Q THE SOUL; 

dence that they belong to the same family of Souls. One often meets 
with strangers, so far as any previous personal acquaintance is con- 
cerned or any outward recognition, yet after five minutes in the presence 
of such an one, each feels that there has been an acquaintance of years. 
One frequently enters into conversation with another and in a short 
time the two become intimate friends; while with others one may live 
in the next house, or even in the same dwelling, and each never know 
the other. A clasp of the hand in an liour of need or sorrow; a look 
of encouragement from kindly, although strange, eyes; a tone of the 
voice that sounds like the voice of one long lost and well beloved; 
these are the occasions that sometimes reveal a kindred Soul. 

This is the solution of those ideal friendships that history has re- 
corded; they are typical illustrations of the fraternity of the Soul. 
Damon and Pythias is the ideal brotherhood which, beyond all ties of 
consanguinit}^, made these two one in the consciousness of the Soul, 
This tie is that which frequently binds men together in business or in 
literature, or science, and they are as one man, they are brothers. 

This longing for the kinship of the Soul explains often the great 
loneliness that is felt in the world. How many people have felt that 
they were aliens, almost outcasts from human life! Many people feel 
that there is, perhaps, not one upon the earth who can enter into their 
feelings or understand them. The most God-like mind, even the 
Christ, was heralded in the ancient record as the one who trod "the 
wine press alone"; so far in advance of mankind as not to be recog- 
nized. This loneliness which many feel, which sometimes results from 
friends and relatives having passed out of mortal life, or from being 
alienated by conviction, sentiment, exaltation, from other friends and 
relatives, is explained in this higher kinshij) of Souls. Thus when one 
meets with a mind who is sympathetic, who understands every thought, 
who in conversation seems to understand what truth it is that one is 
striving to express, who continually exclaims: "I understand this, it is 
plain;" the thoughts of each flow^ together: such as these are Soul kin- 
dred, unknown to each other by name or nationality, they may each 
be of a different country, speaking another language, but when that 
language is translated by the spirit, when each thought is understood 
as coming from within the Soul, it expresses the kinship; such as these 
are of the household of Souls. When you find your friend, your 
brother, your sister, though not reared in the same family, who has a 
different name and parentage, yet to whom in your very heart and 
Soul you feel nearer than to those who have ties of consanguinity you 
have found one of your Soul kindred. For such friendship the whole 
world has often been forsaken, as history many times has revealed. 



PARENTAL AND KINDRED SOULS. 11 

We have known those who were orphans in the midst of their 
parents and a whole house full of l)rothers and sisters, so far as the 
earthly tie was concerned. The story of Cinderella is not a fable: re- 
jected by earthly kindred, the Fairy is the Soul, who works wonders 
out of meanest material things and brings each Cinderella to her own 
inheritance where her Prince is sure to be found. 

We have known those who had a wealth of kindred in Soul who 
had no human relatives. To those who feel the orphaned state which 
seems full of desolation and wandering weariness; that which some- 
times takes possession of lives at birth; that which causes them to 
feel as aliens upon the earth; that which comes to each one, oftentimes 
in crowded cities, or even in the midst of friends, of family and of 
the household, that there is no one who understands, no one who can 
appreciate the feelings and thoughts that are within, we will say: 
do not believe it; there are those who do understand, those who 
appreciate; and the time will come when you wdll meet, when you will 
recognize one another, when the longing for the brother or the sister 
will be fulfilled; when the Soul-tie is accomplished. 

These periods of recognition come only at some great height: 
when the Soul has had expressions of sorrow, when the heart has had 
its tears, and the days of weariness have been full of trials, they have 
quickened the perceptions and made the Soul rush through and claim 
its own. This recognition does not come to those who have not need 
of it: to those in the outward conditions of life, who are satisfied with 
worldly things and treasures; nor is it always true that they come to 
those who are dissatisfied. Sometimes there are members of the same 
family who are Soul-kindred. Two brothers will be more attached to 
one another than to the others, two sisters will seem to be nearer and 
closer to each other than to the other members of the family. Some- 
times the adopted child is the heart-child of the mother, is nearer to 
her in spirit than those of her own flesh and blood. She puts it aside 
in outward conviction, or it is veiled from her consciousness by the 
soft light of tender pity, but in spirit she knows it. Even those who 
have no children oftentimes may recognize in the ones about them those 
who are children in a dearer and nearer sense than if they were their 
own in mortal tie. So what is denied in material life the spirit 
always provides. Sometimes, like a prophecy of the divine family, 
the whole household are kin. This is the ideal household on earth; 
there is no jarring nor discord; all are pervaded by deep spiritual 
love. 

There are those who say, concerning these teachings of embodi- 
ments: "They divide the mother from her child." We answ^er: the 
tie that is real cannot be divided either by mortal birth or death. 



18 THE SOUL; 

Can any one tell us what tie it is that binds the mother to her child 
unless it is the Soul-tie? There is no Soul-tie, and sometimes no 
human love, accompanying some states of physical parentage. Can 
an}^ other teaching explain why the harsh parent sometimes casts 
aside the child, disinheriting from love, estates, home or crown? No 
teachings can separate the mother from her child; the world and its 
selfishness divide, but the Soul reunites, and the true parent and the 
real kindred find every tie perfect in the kingdom of the Soul. 

All Souls having expression at one time upon earth, being in 
groups, those in the groups of any twelve Souls (twenty-four embodied 
human lives) express themselves in similar states at the same time. 
The twelve groups composing the one hundred and forty-four are 
also, as groups, passing through similar experiences. But there are 
divergencies among the one hundred and forty-four thousand, some 
groups passing through an experience or series of experiences a little 
in advance or in slightly diverging lines from the others; but when 
the culminating period is reached all groups belonging to one Dispen- 
sation will have had similar experiences. 

As all Souls in these groups of twelve, and one hundred and 
forty-four, and, at last, in the whole one hundred and forty-four 
thousand, have similar expressions and experiences within one of the 
cyclic periods of the earth, their ripening (or perfection in expression 
on earth) forms one of the smaller Messianic periods, or Dispensa- 
tions, hereafter to be explained. 

The foregoing will explain why in great crises, like that of the 
Reformation, there were those who were ready, those who rallied to 
the cause of the Reformation. All who thus answered were kindred 
in Soul, belonging to the same or a kindred group, had reached the 
same altitude of perception, through expression and experience, at the 
same time. ' If upon the earth today the highest subject that enchains 
the human thought could be presented simultaneously to the whole 
world, as one might fire something from a cannon's mouth withoiit 
warning, there would be one hundred and forty-four thousand ready 
to receive it. Soul-groups of twelve and one hundred and forty-four 
would receive the new truth together, and the ones who are ready are 
in those numbers. 

All religious societies, brotherhoods, and sacred recluses, who have 
united for an exalted purpose are illustrations of this idea. Associa- 
tions, or communities like the Shakers, Quakers, and some of those 
smaller bodies who have retired from the world to establish the mil- 
lennium, are prophecies: the ideal of Socialism, (not its degenerate 
name-sake) the ideal human brotherhood, of which Fourier might have 
been the 2>rophet, and Shelly the poet. 



PAREXTAL AND KIXDREB SOULS. 79 

Kindred Souls, as said before, do not recognize each other, ex. 
cept in momentary glimpses and prophecies, until a certain line of em- 
bodiments are being completed, or in culminations of genius. They 
recognize each other in great crises of nations, and, finally in periods of 
great spiritual change, like the birth of a new religion. Every Dispen- 
sation appears simultaneously to those who are ready among all nations. 
The truth which is the heralder of the New Dispensation is not giv- 
en to you alone in this far western land, but to all the nations where 
human lives are found ready to receive it: the light from beyond death, 
and the truth which is now being expressed to you, finds also its ex- 
pression in almost every language beneath the sun. 

AVe have thus made known who are kindred Souls; they come 
under charge of the same Angels, and their Angels under charge of 
the same Archangel. They traverse together the degrees of human 
life, and reach those states that will be referred to throughout these 
lessons as the "first fruits," in each Dispensation, that are gathered by 
the Messiahs. 

We now, with reverent steps, approach the most sacred shrine of 
the Soul in the expression here: the reunion, or recognition, on earth 
of the Soul, divided in expression by material existence. This is the 
culmination of all embodiments the Crown and Kingdom of all exper- 
ience. 

As the monogamic marriage is the highest state of human socie- 
ty, so is it a prophecy of the Soul marriage, this divine reunion. This 
ideal state is revealed in all poetry, in the highest literature, and is 
that Avhich constitutes the dream of the world. In every human 
life that is lifted above the clod, there is the one ideal state: the 
thought of each that there is, somewhere, another all its own, its pos- 
session. Once each one seems to remember having had this Soul com- 
panion, this other self, in some long past period of human expression; 
or was it an ante-natal dream, a glimpse of the heretofore and the 
hereafter in the skies? 

The Soul, in its twofold expression, having passed through all 
forms of embodiment, meets. This is the perfected Soul, in its con- 
quest over matter. What is meant by this is that when the expression 
of life is spiritually perfect, when the exaltation is complete and the 
earth has no more temptation, the Soul having expressed in every 
form, then the life is complete, then the dual life appears. 

Once only, in the entire series of embodiments, do these divided 
expressions of the Soul meet, before this final expression. In such ca- 
ses the meeting is called "a happy marriage," a union of those '-made 
for each other," a "marriage made in heaven." This meeting is when 
one half the cycles of earthly experience have been passed. It is a 



80 THE SOUL; 

prophecy of ^|;lie final recognition and leaves its impress or reminis- 
cence. Such instances of marriage, form the typical state of human 
happiness; it may not be accompanied with great exaltation in any 
other ways, but the perfectly happy marriage where there is never any 
jar nor discord, nor divergence, there is spiritual, as well as mental and 
moral interchange and interblending. This is not because the two 
portions of the Soul are interchangeable or may be expressed, the mas- 
culine portion in other than the masculine, and the feminine in other 
than the feminine form, but because, in this meeting, there is a mutual 
exchange of experiences, which forevermore is borne on until this fi- 
nal experience when all the lines are complete in the Angel. This is 
why the most exalted men are tender and loving as a woman, not that 
they are "weak and effeminate," but that they are tender, kind, and 
feminine; because having come in contact with the feminine portion 
of their Souls in expression in the one half cycle, they have received 
the baptism of this feminine life. The same is true Avith women who 
express, as did "George Elliot," the intellect of a man, but with all the 
sensitive nature of a woman; as did many Grecian women in philoso- 
phy, or poetry, or strength of physical endurance, express the qualities 
that are supposed to be masculine, but always coupled with refine- 
ment and delicacy. 

In this as in all other states of human expression, there are the 
false and the true heights; the fictitious and the real attainments; so 
in this Soul relation there are the most fatal earthly mistakes before 
the real height is reached. In many states where the life otherwise 
is, apparently, ideal, as in the intellectual height of Greece, marriage 
seems to be disgraced and disregarded; in the revolutionary period 
in France, when woman's powder seemed to be the greatest, there was 
the least sanctity in the home life. 

Frequently minds Avho are illumined somewhat on the subject of 
the Soul-life start from their* anchorage as though they expected to be- 
come angels at once. Let no one suppose that by going out with in- 
tellectual, spiritual, or other than angeldight, this angelic state is to be 
found. No man seeks or finds that which is greater than his attain- 
ment. The false and feverish states in social life are as easily solved 
in this system as the many other complex problems of human life, as 
you will perceive ere the close of the lesson. When we portray the 
real it is the truly ideal, the divine; not a present j^ossession with 
ma^iy, but a prophecy for all. 

The different stages of human experience convey indications of 
approaches to the angelic or perfected state. Human society offers 
many beautiful and many painful illustrations of the true and the 
false heights in this direction. 



PARENTAL AND KINDRED SOULS. 81 

In human states there are many who expect to attain this perfect 
angelic life while merged in the imperfection of the senses; there are 
those who expect to convert, or pervert, the accepted states of human, 
society into something that will lead them to the triumph of the ideal 
height where their selfishness will never permit them to ascend. 
Human beings are not angels until the angel, by growth in expres- 
sion, is fully revealed, and then the perfection is manifested in that 
perfect state. Many social reformers, as they are named, suppose the 
ideal state is to be reached by the making or unmaking of liuman laws, 
but most of the unhappy conditions and relations in human life (in- 
deed we may say all) are the results of the states of individuals, which 
no human ordinance can affect. One must not confound this ideal 
and final state with degrees of expression less tlian perfect. 

Many suppose that they have to begin at the apex to build the 
structure of perfect life on earth, instead of growing to the height 
by attaining self-abnegation by growth, so it has been supposed that 
institutions are in the way of human happiness, but human states are 
in the way of perfect happiness. Let no one suppose that he or she 
can find this Soul-state by going out and searching for the immortal 
matehood. When one grows to the height of a perfect marriage there* 
is no power in heaven or earth that can keep it from one. Until one 
grows to that height, there is no power in heaven or earth that can 
bring it to that one. Therefore the lesson to be learned is that every 
liuman state of society is as perfect as the individuals that compose it. 
Fulfillment of all the duties in life, fidelity to each relation, constitute 
the highest law in human progress. 

There are often lives that are trembling toward completion, have- 
ing longings, aspirations, prayers and hopes which certainly do not 
belong to the physical, but are the approximation of a nearer relation, 
an inner uiifoldment. You have, perhaps, known gifted people, simi- 
larly endowed, who were merely kindred, but who have entered into 
a nearer relationship that has proven disastrous to both. Many of 
these instances might be cited in those intellectual marriages, so 
nearly do they resemble the real, so nearly are the ties of intellect and 
aesthetic taste like the ideal, that it is often the fatal mistake of genius 
to suppose that in another genius is to be found also the other portion 
of the Soul. Where, sometimes, such association has been but a 
blessed state of mutual helpfulness, there are other lives where it has 
been shipwreck and disaster, not from any immorality in either, not 
from any fault that could be named, but from the mistaken idea that 
that kinshi23 is Soul-marriage. 

There is always a restless period accompanying any reform. 
These agitations afford most singular illustrations of what we are now" 



82 THE SOUL 



teaching: that wherever the changes of such revouition affect the 
intellectual, political and religious states, they affect marriage. 
Under imperial decrees there are marriages formed or abrogated, set 
aside or increased; in periods of speculation as in France or in this 
country, marriage becomes a commodity, a matter of barter and sale. 
In periods of revolution all marriage is lightly set aside and lightly 
-entered because every depth of human life is being stirred. This is 
why many reformers, springing toward the ideal, as in the German 
"Storm and Stress" period, or in the French Revolution, or in the earlier 
Grecian history, or as in more recent times, have expected the perfect 
marriage on earth before there were perfect men and women. 

The highest law of Christian lands is the marriage law, as the 
highest state of Christian society is the marriage state, the bulwark of 
all social and moral ideals. The mistake is in supposing that the 
ordinance makes perfection; it is the state in each individual that 
makes the perfect or imperfect marriage. By laws man merely regu- 
lates the differences that must arise in states that are inferior to per- 
fection, but the Divine law is in itself the ordinance of Heaven. 
That which made the typical man and woman in Eden, before and 
after the fall, cling together, makes marriage sacred in the light of 
Heaven, as truth unto the present state. No one can depart or fall 
from that truth and win the highest, because the highest must grow 
up from within. As marriage is the highest state of civilization, so 
its abuse by perversion, by force, by unjust laws, must constitute the 
deepest source of human misery. There must come a state to the 
whole world, as there has come to individuals and groups of Souls, 
when all dross will be put aside and the Soul will be one in this state. 
Each will become the angel again. 

The Souls embodied here do not pass back through the Eden 
state, but through the experiences of darkness and light, sorrow and 
joy, tribulation and conquest, reach perfection; and this perfection 
cannot be reached until all earthly things are vanquished. Fore- 
gleams of this ideal state, prophecies of this divine fulfillment have 
been given in the perfect lives of past dispensations, and in the ex- 
pressions of Genius, whose Soul-dreams become the reality of the per- 
fect human paradise. 

This Soul-marriage is the theme of many writings; many songs 
and many philosophies: of music, poesy, painting, sculpture; so does 
it pervade and imbue literature and art, and different forms of philos- 
ophy, that it has become accepted generally in human thought that 
this perfect Soul-union must belong to the perfect human state, when 
that state becomes divine. 



PARENTAL AND KINDRED SOULS. 83 

The Deities of antiquity reveal this Soul possession as the final' 
recognition on earth. Osiris and Isis were a prophecy; also Jove 
and Maia, and the enthralling divinities that clustered around Olym- 
2)us and Parnassus. Great scholars, teachers and geniuses, as Cadmus, 
the builder of the city of Thebes, and the inventor of sixteen let- 
ters of the Greek alphabet; he it was who searched in vain for his 
sister, his spouse. Plato pictured the ideal of his Soul in the divine 
"Una." Dante, at Florence and Yerona, exiled, bereft and lone, re- 
vealed in his sublime vision Beatrice, who from out her Paradise 
taught him the Avords and works of his divine poem, gave him the 
syllables in which to breathe it to the world, and across the only 
stream which divided them, which was human life and his earthly 
state, gave him the White Rose of Immortal Love. 

Schiller's "Mystery of Reminiscence" is the surpassing poem of 
this Soul recognition : 

"Who and what gave the wish to woo thee, 
Still lip to lip to cleave for aye unto thee, 
What made me long thy very breath to drink, 
Thj" soul in mine to sink? 

"As from the conqueror's unresisted glave 
Flies without strife, subdued, the ready slave 
So when to life's unguarded fort I see 
Thy gaze draw near and near triumphantly 
Yields not my soul to thee? 



'Were once our beings blent and intertwining 
And for that glory still vnj heart is pining; 

Knew we the light of some refulgent sun 

When once our souls were one? 

'Round us in waters of delight forever 
Ravishingl}^ flowed the heavenly nectar river: 
We were the masters of the seal of things 
And where truth in her ever-living springs 
Quivered our glancing wings. 



"Weep for the godlike life Ave lost afar 
That thou and I its scattered fragments are 
And still the unconquered yearning we retain, 
Sigh to renew the long and vanished reign 
And grow divine again," 

We have only quoted a portion of this beautiful poem, so won- 
derfully rendered into your own tongue by one of your own poets — 
Longfellow. Shelly's rare, but imperfectly understood, ideal, as re- 
vealed in the Soul-poem: "Epipscyhidion," portrays this possible 
recognition as seen in the highest realm of poesy which is also the 
realm of inspiration. 



84 THE SOUL; 

The most sacred Soul-love is also the most enchanting to man- 
kind. Dante, painting the divine image of Beatrice upon canvas as 
well as in verse: who would not give more to see that picture that he 
held sacred, than to read the poem given to the world? Who would 
not rather have seen the sonnet that Raphael wrote to his beloved, his 
wife, than to see all the beautiful images, the dear Madonnas that he 
painted? And Avho, knowing that Plato worshiped his divine ideal 
called "Una," would not rather know what mystic tie of human recog- 
nition was included in that Una than solve all the problems of his 
"Kosmos"? 

What this revelation and recognition means, when it is attained, 
let those lives who have given perfect truth to the world attest; what 
this revelation means let every heart longing and thirsting for perfect 
love realize in the promise divine; what it is when attained let each 
wandering waif in existence hear in the voice of prophecy from with- 
in. 

You who are alone, lonely and desolate; you who think your- 
selves companionless and unknown; you who long for the highest 
companionship, remember: that there is no dream, however beautiful 
and perfect, that can, by any possibility, equal the perfection of the 
Soul that knows and claims its own; that there is no ideal, however 
pictured by painter or poet that can possibly illustrate the Soul posses- 
sion. But it is by no self-seeking; when all external self is vanquished, 
then, as a revelation, comes this divine state, and the nearer you ap- 
proach it the more humble and less expectant do you become, for you 
feel the presence, at such time, of the divine and perfect life. Some- 
times it has been revealed in the typical marriage of earth, which is 
also the ideal and, in its highest estate, is the prophecy of this divine 
marriage. 

When all vanquishment of earth and self have been made this fi- 
nal recognition comes into human life; it is not necessary that when 
the recognition takes place there shall be any exalted external pos- 
ition, or anything that people will recognize as greatness in art, sci- 
ence, or learning. Sometimes it is in the lowliest walks; sometimes it 
is in the cloister or convent when across the sacred barriers of vestal 
vows and celibate lives the flashing light of the revelation comes, not 
to break down the barriers, but to send the light of Soul-love far from 
the body within the Soul. In the angelic condition there is no turbu- 
lence nor turmoil. 

All lives tend to this ideal. This perfect, transcendent state is 
that which was pictured by Swedenborg who said: "Those who are 
truly married on earth are in heaven one Angel." When Jesus was 
asked about marriage in heaven, He said: "They are neither married 



PARENTAL AND KINDRED SOULS. 85 

nor given in marriage, but are as the Angels." This is the meaning 
of the state of "the Angels." No spirits are angels, but when the Soul 
has been expressed in all possible states of m.ortal life, the recognition 
then takes place and the Angel is there. The two are one Angel. 
This is the revelation that comes from the angelic state to earth. 
Disembodied spirits do not know it, but Souls. The light of this truth 
gleams fair and bright above all earthly conditions, and this is that 
which comes as the crown of all expression and experience on earth. 

So step by step the progress of attainment of power and glory 
must be won in equal portion, and that achievement, that attainment, 
that final recognition betokens the Angel. It is the final step which is 
always indicated by no self-seeking, but by the vanquishment of all 
earthliness; by that which makes humanity perfect and complete, a life 
of self-abnegation and self-forgetf nines; and he who would go to find 
the Angel because he thinks himself ready is blinded by selfishness. 
Lives that are dissatisfied and restless will do well to attend to the du- 
ties of the hour and know that when the Angel appeareth there is no 
more self-seeking. Sometimes in dungeon cells wherein the self-for- 
getful life has been immured; sometimes in lowly paths of duty; 
sometimes in such self-denial as expelled Dante from his native home, 
and gave him the key to the gates of paradise; whenever and wher- 
ever found it is the one life of fulfillment, the crown of existence. 

The dual life merged in one becomes the Angel; not by the path- 
way traversed in the involution, but by the pathway of overcoming, 
of vanquishing the material expression until there can be revealed 
through the mortal form the angelic Soul. Tliis height has been at- 
tained by such as have led and guided the world, which slowly fol- 
lows after them. 

The dual lives flow together in outward expression, and that is 
the perfected life, the expression of the perfect Soul; the final embod- 
iment on earth is that perfected Soul expression, and not until this ex- 
pression is attained by every conquest can the recognition take place, 
and not until that recognition has the Soul finished the earthly ex- 
pressions, then the Angel is made known. 

When the Angel is completed in expression, when such as these 
pass from mortal forms, they are not in spirit states but as one 
Angel enter the angelic state, which is beyond the spiritual state, the 
pei-fection of all spiritual states; they will no more be embodied in 
mortal form, but will have charge of the Souls that come after tliem. 
These Angels are Parental Souls, or Guides; not in the sense that the 
word parent is used generically, here it is used to express the degree 
of difference between the perfected Soul, i. e.: the Soul that has per- 
fected its expression in the earthly state, and the states of the Souls 



so THE SOUL 



who are still in the progress of perfecting the expression. So those 
who enter and pass through the earthly state and who have been gath- 
ered into the angelic kingdom constitute the Parental Sonls of those 
who are to follow in the next cycle or dispensation; are their guardian 
Angels. When any one is told of a Guardian Angel this term must 
always mean the Parental Soul of a group of twelve Souls, ( twenty- 
four human embodiments) who are kindred Souls. 

These Angels have possession of all experience and wisdom of 
earth and thus have the power to aid others who are following on in 
the pathway and pilgrimage of earthly life. Those in the spheres of 
Angels, being beyond the spheres of ministering spirits and departed 
friends, keej) watch and guard by appointment over those spiritual 
states connected with the earth, each Angel appointing ministering 
spirits according to the need or state of mortals. There are many 
degrees of Angel life which will hereafter be referred to. 

These completed, or angelic Souls, remain in the state of angelic 
ministry unto earth until succeeded by another harvest of Souls, who 
become in turn guardian Angels of those on earth; so that all who 
ripened under the past dispensation remain as guardian Angels of the 
Souls that they have in charge for the present dispensation. 

There are other angelic states; and in each of these states there 
are degrees; but that which is to be borne in mind in this lesson is, 
that none are either left to grope their way in darkness nor are they 
unduly aided, but are assisted by all the light and knowledge in the 
universe, adapted to the needs of each by the Parental Soul. 

In great periods, like those of spiritual dispensations, more lives 
culminate than at any other time, so that when Christ passed into and 
out of the earthly ministration His Angels accompanied Him, and the 
"first fruits" of His kingdom were completed Souls who were ready 
to become angels when He appeared. 

Unto those to whom this ideal thought, this perfect revelation 
can come, this recognition of kindred Souls, this knowledge of the 
Parental Soul and its guidance, this Soul-marriage, there is complete 
fulfillment of all prophecy. The states of mortal life, chastening, pu- 
rifying, uplifting, unfolding, lead, step by step, to the condition of ful- 
fillment, to the condition of perfect recognition, and under that love, 
under that fulfillment, the Angel is won. Then all lines of life are re- 
vealed, there is no more imperfection, each portion of the Soul sees 
within the other that which has been passed, there is all reminiscence 
with its i^erfect grace; and all divinest prophecy. 

The points to be remembered in the lesson just given are: 

The Souls accompanying each other to and passing thkough 
earthly experiences at the same time are in groups. 



PARENTAL AND KINDRED SOULS. 87 

Those in the smallest groups, of twelve Souls, are called 
A Family of Souls, and are Soul Kindred. 

The larger groups of one hundred and forty-four Souls 
are Societies of kindred groups. 

The one hundred and forty-four thousand Souls are Mes- 
sianic GROUPS AND ARE THE " FIRST FRUITS " OF EACH DISPENSA- 
TION. 

Parental Souls are Angels haying charge of groups. 
The Soul reunited or recognized on earth becomes the 
Angel. This angel state is the result of the conquest over every 
form of earthly imperfection, the perfect man, the perfect woman, the 
two perfect expressions of one Soul. 

All Souls are in groups. 
All Souls have kindred. 
All Souls ultimately recognize their kindred. 
All are in charge of a parental Soul: an Angel. 
All avill ultimately arrive at Soul recognition and re- 
union IN the Soul-marriage: the Angel. 



SIXTH LESSON. 

ANGELS, ARCHANGELS AND MESSIAHS; 

ALSO EMBODIMENTS IX OTHER PLAX^ETS. 

Wondrous as seems the attainment of the completed life of the 
■earth, perfect as it would seem the angelic state must be, when the 
earth has been vanquished and the Soul-light has shone through mat- 
ter, wonderful as is the perception of that Angel who is prepared to 
lead other Souls to the knowledge that material life is not life, still 
this is but one of the stepping stones, one of the first steps in that 
great series that in every solar system must be twelve. 

The angelic state of each planet is the perfect life of that planet, 
representing the Soul in its essence, or unit; but there are, as said be- 
fore, many degrees of angelic states belonging to each planet. The 
perfected Soul, having become reunited, does not at once pass on to 
another planet and have expression there, but in the heavens that be- 
long to each planet the Soul exercises its beneficent parental power. 
By parental power we mean having charge of other Souls who are 
passing through the experiences of time. These Angels are secondary 
Angels and represent the Primal Angels, those who accompanied them 
and their groups of Souls to earth. 

The whole of the angelic life belonging to the earth would occu- 
py as much time as all the embodiments upon the earth. Just as the 
23eriods in spirit life correspond, in some degree, to the expressions in 
mortal form in point of time, so in the angelic state there is fruition of 
all expressions, and a period of ministration corresponding to all the 
time of experience; so if Souls have been one million, or ten millions 
of years passing through the embodiments in one planet, the angelic 
state belonging to that planet will occupy a corresponding length of 
time, and they will assist other Souls and spirits in the states beneath. 
In the angelic state as a unit the Soul performs the labor for which 
the experience and expression has been perfected on the earth, in 
piloting other Souls through the quicksands and shoals of human life 



ANGELS, ARCHANGELS AND MESSIAHS. 89 

as each has been piloted by the Primal Angels; thus there is a succes- 
sion of angelic expressions belonging to the earth in the ripened states 
of angelic life, the harvest of all attainments. 

The Anojels of different deojrees belonsfinoj to the angelic states of 
earth, whether as primary Angels or secondary Angels, from the be- 
ginning, in all degrees, have especial names, functions, and powers; 
but their states are so far beyond the earth and its present compre- 
hension that we can only refer to them. For instance: the earth is 
one of the least of the planets of the solar system. AVhen Souls 
approach a system of planets they approach for embodiments in 
all the planets of that system successively. The intervening an- 
gelic states are, therefore, what might be termed periods of res- 
pite, from expression to ministration. The ministering power being 
in the Angel, expression being that which includes all of the mortal 
career; so all ministering power in the solar system and the palpable 
aids to human spirits are in the angel states. Angels employ the min- 
istering spirits to do their bidding, which is the will of God. Minis- 
tering spirits are often confounded with guardian Angels; you noAV 
perceive the difference. The ministering spirit has not finished earth- 
ly expression, is in sympathy with earthly conditions, is affected by 
the turmoil of earthly existence. 

The state of the Angel is the most perfect state of labor as it 
is the most perfect state of rest; is that which is near the state of 
causation, that which is the force impelling to every activity, and 
that must be a state of calmness and rest, ^Vhile all is agitation 
in the spirit state, and in the conditions of mortals on the earth, in 
the angelic state there is no agitation, because there is possession. 
That being the state of calmness, the state of perfection, so far as 
fulfillment of expressiou is concerned, on the planet of which it is 
the angel state. You thus perceive the object of the expression on 
earth and other planets, in its fruition, just as you have in the fruit- 
age of the vine the object of its planting. 

It may, therefore, be said that the angelic states of each planet 
are, in reality, the fruition of the planet, and hold as possession all that 
Souls have expressed of love and knowledge, from witbiu, through the 
victory over matter, this victory being attested in the presence of the 
Archangels. 

If earth were the highest planet all would have been attained 
that is possible in this solar system. But as there are planets beneath 
your earth, some of which have not reached the state of possible ex- 
pression to any human life, (those within the radius of the earth's 
orbit, are beneath the earth in generic expression) so there are planets 
outside of the earth's orbit that express unfoldment in the exact order 



90 THE SOUL; 

of their positions in the solar system; those planets are beyond the 
earth in expression. 

If the Angels of earth seem to be exalted beyond human compre- 
hension, what will you say of those planets whose Angels would be as 
Archangels compared to those of earth? 

When the knowledge of the solar system is complete there will 
be twelve planets included in your astronomical tables. Those not 
yet discovered by the science of earth will be known when that 
science is further advanced. The planetary steps from earth out- 
Avard are all steps of advancement, and after the Angel of earth has 
remained in the different degrees of the angelic states of the earth as 
long as is required for the entire perfection of that expression, minis- 
tering to others, having charge of others who are following in the 
paths of time and sense, ex^Dression on the next planet begins. 

In approaching a solar system Souls approach the lowermost state 
of expression possible in that solar system, passing successively 
through the different states of each planet. The earth was the lowest 
state when Souls commenced expression here. Venus is now lower 
than the earth, the next in degree is Mercury; the next planet nearest 
the sun is not even discovered, and the outer planets are not dreamed 
of. When Souls were first embodied upon the earth, the earth afforded 
the stages of expression that the planet nearest the sun, capable of 
any human expression, now affords, and that will be afforded by the 
last planet nearest the sun when the solar system is completed. 
When all the planets are discovered, it will be found that Souls can 
be embodied in the lowermost and outermost states at the same time. 

The planet Mars, being next the earth in the astronomical order of 
your solar system, has no lower expression of life than your highest 
and most spiritual expression here. So, any embodiment upon the 
planet Mars would represent a higher state of expression than the 
highest embodiment upon the planet earth, (excepting the Messiahs 
who are beyond the angelic state of the earth) would be like your 
Angels. 

In taking this next degree of embodiment, when all is fulfilled in 
the angelic states between the earth and Mars, the Angel does not pass 
beyond the solar system but enters expression in the next step. As 
there is every experience and expression on the earth which belong to 
earth, so in the next step, which is expression on the planet Mars, the 
Soul must have all embodiments and must express all that is possible 
there, all that the planet has provided. On entering that planet there 
is expression, as here, according to the laws that govern that planet. 
Do not think that those expressions are like the expressions on earth; 
if they were, Souls would not be required to pass through them, as 



ANGELS, ARCHANGELS AND MESSIAHS. 91 

before entering upon expression there, all Souls must have passed 
through all possible experiences of earth as mortals, spirits and Angels. 
Souls must pass through all expressions on the next planet after hav- 
ing fulfilled all ministrations in the angelic states between the two 
planets, i. e., having fulfilled all that relates to the group to w^hich the 
Soul belongs. As long as any Souls in that group or in the Messianic 
group of that disjDensation shall still have expression in mortal, 
spiritual or angelic states of earth, none can enter the next planetary 
existence. In fact, in point of time, as said before, in the angelic 
state there must be as great a period as in the unfoldment of all 
embodiments on earth. 

If some of the inhabitants of the planet Mars were presented 
to you, were it possible for you to perceive them with your earthly 
vision or spiritual perception, you would consider that they belong to 
a race of Angels; yet these would be but the human beings of Mars. 
They have physical powers and possessions of which you have no 
knowledge and which can only come through the Angels of your 
planet. Disembodied spirits can only give you this knowledge from 
beyond the orbit of the earth through the Angels of earth, because the 
angelic states alone perceive and impart this knowledge, unless the 
planet be beneath the earth; if it is, then disembodied spirits can min- 
ister to that planet under guidance, but if above the earth the disem- 
bodied spirit can only be shown those states and degrees, as said be- 
fore, by the Angels of your planet. 

To typify the states of that planetary life — what they are — we 
will say: where you crawl they walk, w^here you walk they may fly, 
where you dream they fulfill; compared to the earth, the atmosphere, 
the life on the planet, and everything pertaining to it, are of such a 
nature that you w^ould think them all spiritual, angelic ; still they in- 
habit organic bodies and are material. But as all science and art and 
religion upon the earth in its present unfoldment, even in the highest, 
are the next degree beneath the low^est that the planet Mars expresses, 
can you judge w^hat must be the condition of the planet whose low- 
est states already typify your highest ideal? You can not even con- 
ceive it. 

As said before, could you see the inhabitants of Mars, as em- 
bodied in the material life of that planet they would seem to you as 
gods. Such is the next step of expression. But we are here to tell 
you that through the expression of life upon the planet Mars there are 
as great victories to win, and great achievements to be wrought, as 
between the lowest and highest states on earth. Thus, it will be seen, 
that they can by no means be like what the earth has offered, but 



92 THE SOUL; 

must be a continuation, just as a next higher grade in education must 
commence where the lower one ceases. 

Among the ancients, who knew most of these teachings. Mars 
was supposed to be the Nemesis of the earth. It was supposed 
that all powers regulating the justice of man to man, and retribution 
for wrong, were in some way connected with this planet Mars. It has 
been referred to in a previous lesson that some lives seem to sweep 
into human existence, not governed by the usual rules that regulate 
humanity, for the specific purpose of righting wrong; that these are 
messengers from the planet Mars. 

When all the degrees of expression have been experienced, when 
every possible conquest has been made upon Mars, the Angel again 
appears, ( the Angel of that planet, Mars,) and that Angel is as much 
higher in achievement than the one that has expression as the Angel 
of the earth, as the planet itself is higher in relation to the planetary 
system. All this time the expression is from the Soul. Remember 
that it is only that the higher planet affords a better opportunity for 
expressing that which is within the Soul; and that Angel is one who 
watches over this world in ways that are mysterious to you, but can 
be understood by the Angels of the earth, those who guard mankind. 
These Angels of the planet Mars, having higher knowledge and wis- 
dom than the Angels of the planet earth, must announce to the Angels 
of the planet earth any truths in the Celestial kingdom, any ap- 
proach of a dispensation, as these can only be known through the 
higher Angels. 

There is a break in the geometrical ordpr of planets in the space 
occupied by the Asteroids. Among the ancients there was a series of 
traditions, that there was a war in Heaven between Mars and Jupiter, 
or between the deities of those planets there seemed to be discord, 
which caused the disruption of a planet. This divided or broken 
planet illustrates that which has been stated before: that the usual 
order proves the rule, and the exception is that which illustrates the 
rule. It is generally accepted by astronomers that, geometrically, 
these Asteroids occupy precisely the position that a planet should or 
would occupy under Herschel's system of ratios. Unquestionably, in 
the great cycles of material life there is always a break somewhere ; 
that, as you compromise with perfect harmony by certain notes of 
discord, that, as every musician will understand, there is no music that 
is not a compromise — were harmony perfect it could not 'be played 
by any living musician upon any earthly instrument, — so in the 
twelve planets, which are the harmonies in the solar system, there is 
this interval, this compromise. 



ANGELS, ARCHANGELS AND MESSIAHS. 93 

These Asteroids are places of experiences, experiraents, fragment- 
ary states. Perhaps you know people who consider that they could 
have made a better world, some who think that they could regulate 
things better, that they could govern the world better than it is gov- 
erned, those who think that God has made a mistake in the order of 
the universe, that something is out of place, unfortunate or wrong; 
these have an opportunity of experimenting upon the Asteroids. As 
you often send naughty boys to play in a place that is limited, giving 
them something to do that they may test their boasted strength and 
power, so these Asteroids are places of experiment for vain spirits; 
those who think they can do something better than, in the usual or- 
der of things, earth affords; there is an opportunity for experiment, 
which is generally a failure. Perhaps the typical Lucifer might have 
been banished to one of the Asteroids had he not found a larger king- 
dom on the earth where he could illustrate the darkness of his light. 

As said before, it was supposed by some of the ancients that 
this break was caused by war between the reigning divinities. Kot so 
however; Jove is acknowledged to be Jupiter, and takes secondary 
charge of the planets next to the sun, while the Angel of Saturn has 
charge over all planets within its orbit. 

It will be useless to expect, either on the wings of. philosophy or 
poetry and imagery, to traverse the entire solar system or endeavor to 
take you through all the planets and their states. The lesson can be 
stated, but the magnitude of conception must be left to the domain of 
the Soul. 

The lowest expressions of Souls on the planet Jupiter are higher 
than the highest on the planet Mars. Forms, although having generic 
life, still have almost instantaneous perfection, such is the subtle 
power of spirit over the very refined substance that constitutes that 
wonderful orb. Even in the planet Mars it is, unquestionably, true 
that the inhabitants are now wondering why they cannot make the 
inhabitants of the earth perceive them; are endeavoring by signals, 
which will one day be perceived, to attract the attention of those who 
live upon the earth. Could it be possible for you to perceive the in- 
habitants of Jupiter, as they will be revealed to you by interplanetary 
life, you would see beings whom you would fall down and worship, 
but they are not to be worshiped, they are only higher expressions of 
Souls like yourselves. 

Those who are the highest Angels of the planet Jupiter enter into 
cycles or periods that make them lesser Archangels, representing the 
period of the one-half cycle of all planets. These Archangels are those 
that have communion with, or send messages to the Souls on earth; 
are those that announce the approach of a dispensation ; are those 



94 THE SOUL; 

that ill the Middle Ages have been named; and, after all tradition is 
taken away from demonology, enough was known to show that there 
was an order of Angels regarded as belonging to your planet; but the 
ancients did not know, however, that these w^ere the Souls of those who 
had once had expression on this planet; they become, by higher ex- 
pression, higher Angels, Archangels, i. e., beyond the Angels ; these 
Archangels are those who have greater power and scope of knowledge 
than the Angels. The higher Archangels understand the creative 
processes of life. 

Between the inhabitants of the planets Jupiter and Saturn inter- 
communion is carried on to such an extent, that you could only con- 
ceive of it by your rarest angelic communion. 

If the expressions on the planet Jupiter are such that the grossest 
forms there would transcend your highest ideal, your visions of fairy- 
land, your conceptions of paradise ; if matter is so subjugated by 
spirit, and by the law of the planetary life of Jupiter that all labor is 
performed by the rarest mechanism and thought; if even the perfection 
of all mechanical impulses, inventions, and delicate intricacies of life 
governing Mars are superceded, set aside, by the still more subtle and 
wonderful processes known in Jupiter, when its spirit prevails, then 
there could be, no conception in the mind of man on earth of what the 
expression of life on Saturn is, or what the Angels or the Archangels 
of that planet might be. 

After planetary experience on Saturn and its angelic states, the 
Archangels pass into the interstellar heavens, ministering there to all 
lower Angels. They may even pass beyond the solar system, into the 
solar systems of your central sun, exchanging labors and ministra- 
tions with the Archangels of those systems. 

The outer planets of your solar system reveal a life that is far 
beyond statement. Life upon each planet reveals as its culmination 
the Angels and Archangels, of as much higher degree as the planet 
itself is higher. Those higher planets and their expressions are so far 
beyond the imagination of the children of earth that it cannot be pos- 
sible to state them, only to say that the embodiment on each planet 
begins w^here the expression of the preceding planet culminates, until 
we reach the outermost planet of the solar system, where all are Arch- 
angels. These are the Souls who are ready to have charge over 
Avorlds, and it is unquestionably true that in, certain states, not only 
beings of a still higher order, but Archangels must know the process 
of making w^orlds, as well as of assisting those w^ho are passing 
through the experiences of planets. 

In those remote and wonderful systems that shine upon you in 
the starry pathway or "Milky Way," some Demigod holds sway, or in 



ANGELS, ARCHANGELS AND ME S SLABS. 95 

clouds of nebulae, where unborn worlds seem to move, some highest 
Archangel, some Demigod who has passed through all planetary 
existence of the twelve solar systems, is arranging new solar systems, 
and even knows the Souls that will be in his charge; as that most 
ancient Archangel wdio saw this solar system in its nebulous state, 
knew what Souls were to pass through the various expressions on the 
different planets. No more, to an Archangel, is this creation of 
worlds than the building of ships by the master builder, or the erec- 
tion of a temple by one who understands it. 

Such, then, are the steps of this wonderful planetary existence 
that they can only be hinted at in these lessons. The degrees that 
intervene between you and the outermost planet are degrees of gradual 
spiral ascent toward that which we have denominated the Archangel. 
The Archangels belonging to the solar system freely mingle with the 
Archangels of other solar systems; yet there are beings of a still high- 
er order. There are Archangels who dwell in an atmosphere that 
would correspond to the white light of the sun; such as these would 
be denominated: 

^'SoNs OF God." 

Not Archangels of the solar system, but those who have over- 
come worlds; who have passed through system after system, conquer- 
ing the external strife, shadow, and sin of all planets; who, in the 
presence of that Infinite Light and Splendor, perceive the twelvefold 
radiance not known even to the Archangels. 

Around a more distant sun Avhose direction is hinted at in 
the shaft of the pyramid at Ghezah, toward Alcyone in the Pleiades, 
are twelve systems of planets including your own, each having a sun. 
From out that central orb beings of wonderful light appear. These 
are the inter-solar Archangels: the Pemigods, appointed by Infinite 
Love to aid in the formation of worlds. These are they who plan 
places for systems of suns, who are blessed with creative power; 
possessed by the Deity in the infinite degree, it is possessed by them in 
a finite degree. These are they who have worn the garment of mor- 
tality in all those planets and systems, who understand the meaning 
of all forms of expression, and have vanquished all worlds. 

You thus perceive that w^hen the Soul has given expression to all 
its possibilities in all these twelve w^orlds and systems, then the "Sons 
of God" appear. When Christ said, "Behold, I have overcome the 
world," he did not mean simply the earth, but all worldly conditions. 
The " Sons of God " are twelve in number, they are the culminated 
light from eleven other systems where they have passed through all 
the stages of planetary existence corresponding to your solar system. 



96 THE SOUL; 

The term "Children of the Sun" is what was meant in the original, 
but that you may understand it better we use the words "Sons of 
God." 

Once in a fixed period of years, when this series of systems 
moves in a certain portion of the heavens, there is a Messianic Dis- 
pensation. There is certain planetary growth at times of perihelion, 
Avhen the systems are nearer the central sun, corresponding to certain 
periods in your particular solar system. So when the great Sun of 
Truth shines upon any world from this Messianic center, regulated by 
the great law of growth of expression on each planet, there is a period, 
or cycle, called a Messianic period. There are the shorter Messianic 
periods, and lesser Messiahs, called Buddhas, in the East. These 
appear on earth once in twenty-two thousand, five hundred years, 
marking only one portion of the large astronomical cycle; but when 
this entire system of planets and your sun, and when all the twelve 
encircling suns and their systems have made a revolution around the 
Central Sun, then a greater Messiah appears; there is fuller growth 
and larger expression for the harvest of Souls. Each Messianic period 
gathers a harvest of Souls, i. e.: those who are ready to become An- 
gels, Angels who become Archangels. Twelve Archangels of the in- 
ter-solar heavens accompany the Messiahs. These are they who 
breathe to the Archangels, of any solar system, the approach of the 
Messiahs. The Archangels of the earth receive from the "highest 
heavens," meaning the inter-solar heavens, the state of the Sun, the 
messages of approaching dispensations. 

It was the Archangel Michael who stood by the gateway of Par- 
adise with the flaming sword, that those who passed out of the Eden 
of Adam might not return by that way, but by the only way pos- 
sible, the way of Christ. Michael w^as the Archangel of the Mosaic 
dispensation, and he, realizing that man passes thus from the state of 
innocence, the Eden of Love, also knows the way he shall regain it: 
by the way of victory over sin, by the way of conquest over error, by 
the way of perceiving that even though he seek in the sun or in the 
shadow he shall not find the light there, but only from within. This 
is the return to the Father's Kingdom; it is not, as said before, by the 
gateway of Eden, which you remember was the gateway of innocence 
overwhich Michael with "flaming sword" held guard, preventing man 
from returning that way; (the "flaming sword" is conscience, the per- 
ception of shortcomings in material life) but by the attainment of vic- 
tory over temptation when in the mortal life; so do you attain purity. 
The difference between purity and innocence is, that innocence is 
without knowledge of good; purity is perfect knowledge. There- 



ANGELS. ARCHANGELS AND MESSIAHS. 07 



fore in this kingdom, which is the return to the Father's Dwelling,, 
there is the Christ state. 

The Archangel Gabriel knew that Christ was to come, was ap- 
pointed from the preceding dispensation to usher in the new. It was 
Gabriel who closed the Christian Dispensation and passed on to a 
higher state of Archangels. When Gabriel had finished the Christ- 
ian Dispensation, another degree was added to his experience as an 
Archangel, for he had seen the beginning and the ending of a dis- 
pensation. 

There are only twelve inter-solar Archangels who can ever be 
known to earth; they usher in and close the dispensations. The Arch- 
angels between your earth and other planets of your solar system' 
are one hundred and forty four. As each inter-solar Archangel is 
accompanied by twelve who are within the system that you belong to> 
these each have their appointed powers. 

Around the sun of your system twelve planets move. (When that 
entire system is known.) Twelve solar systems move around the more 
distant sun; and twelve times twelve around the still more distant sun. 
This is the planetary scheme, and it corresponds to the Messianic plan. 
The Sons of God have overcome the worlds. When a Messiah ap- 
proaches the earth He is accompanied by twelve Archangels of the in- 
ter-solar heavens, when He approaches a planet His Archangels are 
accompanied by one hundred and forty-four who typify the highest 
state within that solar system, and into the charge of each of these 
planetary Archangels one hundred and forty-four Souls are given. 
These Messiahs constitute the redeeming power, the highest teach- 
ing the planet can receive, and each must be a Messiah in all the 
planets of a system; so there are successions of dispensations. These 
are the "twelve manner of fruits" grown upon that "Tree of Life" 
whose leaves are for the "healing of the nations." That "Tree of 
Life" lost in the Eden of Adam is restored in the Heaven of Christ. 

Chosen Archangels accompany the Souls to be embodied in a so-- 
lar system, so the first one hundred and forty-four Archangels (includ- 
ing twelve Messiahs) must constitute, successively, Archangels and 
Messiahs of all the planets of the solar system. You Avill have, before 
the earth and the planets of the solar system have fully expressed 
their entire perfection, twelve Messiahs, each one accompanied by a 
group of twelve Archangels from beyond the solar system. These are 
the typical twelve in Sacred Writ, to whom, as nearly as possible in 
outward form, the twelve disciples are to be compared; they typified 
the symbols of these divine lights who have each different names and 
offices to perform under a given dispensation. Gabriel was the her- 
ald, under the Messianic Archangels, of the Christian Dispensation^ 



98 THE SOUL; 

and belonged to your solar system, but could not approach excepting 
to announce a Messiah. These twelve Archangels have beneath 
them, as said before, one hundred and forty-four Angels gathered from 
the other planets in your solar system, who have had experiences in 
those planets and who, from the first, have charge of Souls upon the 
earth. 

When Oresses, (not Osiris) the "most Ancient Angel," was pict- 
ured as presiding over the incubation of the world, with countenance 
almost like unto God, he was the Archangel who heralded the ap- 
proach of the first Messiah unto the earth, with the Souls that were to 
be born upon the earth, in the kingdom that was to be ripened first. 
The seed was sown for the harvest of all the ages. Those were 
the "Angels of God w^ho shouted for joy" when the "morning stars 
sang together" for the infant world given unto their keeping, which 
was to be the cradle for the experience of all the Souls that the twelve 
Messiahs are to call their own. The group of twelve Archangels ac- 
companying the first Messiah, when the earth under the first dispen- 
sation was ready for that Messiah, are all the Archangels of all the 
Kingdoms. Those, as said before, were accompanied by the highest 
Angels belonging to the solar system who came w^ith the first groups 
of Souls belonging to your solar system. 

There are the larger and the smaller cycles, or Messianic periods. 
The latter refer to individual planetary states. Under the Brahmin- 
ical religion the lesser period was indicated by a Buddha, or prophet; 
the greater period by Yishnu himself, w^ho became incarnated as 
the "Lord of Earth". In Egypt the larger cycle was indicated by 
the reign of Osiris and Isis, (god and goddess of the Sun and Earth) 
while lesser deities reigned during the shorter Messianic periods. As- 
tronomical signs were frequently used by the ancients to represent 
these two cycles, in which the twelve signs of the zodiac were conspic- 
uous; but they always had a spiritual, as w^ell as a literal, meaning 
when so used. A knowledge of the esoteric meaning is given in these 
teachings, so you may separate the literal from the spiritual in read- 
ing ancient records. 

When under one of the vaster cycles (not simply a cycle that in- 
cludes one hundred and forty-four thousand Souls, for these are under 
the smaller dispensations) all the Souls of a dispensation shall finally 
be gathered, it will be found that all the Angels and all the Archan- 
gels, and all the inter-solar Archangels and their Messiah will have 
left the states of experience and expression belonging to one planet of 
this solar system and will have passed on to the next planet, the 
Angels as spirits to be embodied there, the Archangels to be Angels, 
the Messiah an Archangel until "the fullness of time". A certain 



ANGELS, ARCHANGELS AND MESSIAHS. 99 

length of time is given these to have expression in the next stage of 
matter nnder the law of the culmination of the Soul's entire expres- 
sion; that law Avould include all Souls that belong to a certain dis- 
pensation. 

Concerning the Christian Dispensation, when it w^as said that 
there were one hundred and forty-four thousand from the tribes of the 
Children of Israel w^ho would be called into Christ's kingdom it un- 
doubtedly was true. If you could know positively, which you cannot 
excepting under this law, the number that ripened from the Jewish 
nation into the Christian Dispensation for the angelic state, you 
would perceive that typical number. You cannot know, by any hu- 
man knowledge, the whole number that Christ has reached: those who 
have passed to the angelic state under the Christian Dispensation; but 
rest assured the typical number of Souls that ripen under each dispen- 
sation have already ripened in Christ. You are children of the Nev^ 
Dis^jensation or you would not be here. You do not belong to the 
kinodom of Christ because He has harvested His kinsrdom, but vou 
belong to the kingdom that is to come. 

Your Earth is approaching the culmination of one of the larger 
cycles, the beginning of a wonderful dispensation, which includes the 
hirger Messianic period, so that the fruitage ripening is more abun- 
dant than in the lesser Messianic periods of the earth. This grander 
cycle will include all Soul-fruitage that has been ripened since the pre- 
ceding grand cycle. 

This, the Sixth Dispensation is imminent; by imminent we do 
not mean that it is today or tomorrow, but the heralds are here, the 
signs and tokens are in your midst; the Messianic period dawns upon 
you; the light that has been foretold is coming: as it dawned over 
Egypt, as it dawned over Assyria, as it dawned over eastern Asia, 
as it dawned over Jerusalem, such is the light that is now coming 
unto you. 

The five past dispensations are not all within the realm of your 
historical knowledge. The first you cannot recall, even by the dim, 
prehistoric, Egyptian divinities; but in the eastern portion of Asia 
there is a clear and distinct record, from the lines of the Brahminical 
faith. You may also look for a dispensation in India; another in Egypt, 
the prehistoric Egypt; another in the lost Atlantis, and now you 
have passed the Christian dispensation (the culmination of the Mosaic) 
and are entering upon the new. This dispensation must be name- 
less until the Messiah appears. The "Comforter," whose coming was 
predicted by Jesus, is now here, the Avatar of that dawn that is now 
upon you, the herald of the Messiah that is to come. 



100 THE SOUL 



There has been much confusion and mistranslation connected 
with past dispensations because the larger and smaller cycles and 
their Messiahs have been confounded. The true Messiahs of the lar- 
ger cycles have been mistaken for those who followed after them 
bearing the same names, or for reformers or teachers of a given 
religion. 

Because this Sixth Dispensation, which you are approaching, in- 
dicates one half the cycles in which the earth and solar system will 
yield up their treasures, because civilization has traversed the entire 
circuit of the globe and you are now at its beginning, (the country 
which is supposed to be the newest is in reality the oldest) because 
the sixth dispensation finishes one half the cycles of religion upon the 
earth, one half the 'Messiahs, so this dispensation is the more impor- 
tant as it will be the more complete. 

The Messiahs are recorded in history only by their masculine 
names, but in almost every instance the feminine Christ was ailso 
understood; although the feminine principle was veiled, yet, because 
veiled, was the more sacred. Isis and Osiris, who were not a Christ, 
were the typical Angel or Archangel; were heralds of the per- 
fection of Christ on earth. There was in every Messianic name 
that which was understood to be the feminine expression: in the 
Roman Catholic Church the Madonna is worshiped, almost more than 
Christ; in all other religions there are dual names for the Messiahs. 
When the earth passes its physical expression and advances toward 
spiritual culmination the feminine expression of the Christs will be 
more prominent than in the past. In this coming dispensation the ex- 
pression will be (Jual, there Vv^ill be man and woman, the typical 
Christ, the perfect humanity. 

As said before, there are indications of the approach of this 
dispensation; under its dawning light you can trace all the differ- 
ent lines of religion in the past, those that are clearly outlined and 
are historic, and by a reflected light you can almost trace those that 
are prehistoric, through the lines of tradition. As this light ap- 
proaches the earth you can trace not only the lines of the lives of the 
Messiahs, but the approach of the Archangels, those who ushered in 
the dispensations. As the Archangels have no connection with 
the earthly state excepting in connection with the Messiahs, they 
usher in and close the dispensations. The revelation of Gabriel and 
Michael form typical illustrations of this; Michael was the Archangel 
who ushered in and closed the Mosaic Eden, and the Archangel 
Gabriel announced and closed the dispensation of Christ. Gabriel is the 
synonym of that voice which is sent forth to herald the next Messiah. 
That Archangel of the new dispensation hath a name unknown to 



AJSfGELS, ARCHANGELS AND MESSIAHS, 101 

the children of earth, but known to the Angels who herald the new 
Life and Light. 

As the earth approaches this Messianic period there are hosts in 
the upper air and in the angelic states that seem to come together; 
and could you perceive them, with even the smallest perception, they 
would seem like the moving of grand armies of Peace and Love each 
bearing the standard of their Messiahs. As the new Messiah draws 
near the pathways of truth broaden and deepen. The earth is prepar- 
ing for a greater harvest, all the ancient nations are to be stirred. 
Not only are ministering spirits and angels approaching mankind 
today, but the Archangels who precede one of the larger Messianic 
periods. As it is, there is no wonder there is deep agitation; it is 
no wonder that nations are rising to new activity; it is no wonder that 
the foreboding of this light brings to some minds disturbance and to 
others peace, according to their states. 

If between the embodiments of spirits upon earth a few hundred 
or a few thousand years seem long to you, and if between the ex- 
pressions of the Soul on one planet and the commencement of expres- 
sion on the next, the millions of years, which people count as a period 
of rest from their labors, seem long, what must it seem when unto the 
"Father's house" those who are qualified to be the Sons of God return 
and pass seons? While worlds are being born, and systems are recre- 
ated they aid in that wonderful process as Sons of God. You are thus 
shown the great scheme of existence to illustrate the possibilities in 
all Souls. As the Sons of God overcome all the physical expressions 
in all the planets of a system of systems, this is typical of that which 
each Soul will attain. All those trembling now somewhere in bodily 
form will one day in other worlds express the perfect Soul of which 
the present form is a feeble expression; will go and be a Christ 
to some benighted world. When each shall have passed through 
all expressions in all the planets; when the life that trembles here, 
and is so fearful of being blotted out, shall have gained the tri- 
umph over material existence; when each in the light of the Soul 
shall stand for the fullest value in that expression, and shall know 
that where a Soul is to become the Messiah of any new made cen- 
ter or solar system, that Soul shall not only have a voice in its cre- 
ation, shall not only be one of the Angels that shall shout for joy 
when the worlds are born, but shall watch the Souls as they pass 
through those states of expression. They will wait for such an one 
as their Messiah as you now wait for yours. 

As that which is lowest must be touched by the "Man of sor- 
rows," so that which is highest must be typical of the culminations of 
the expressions of all Souls, and if you complain at even the lowest 



102 THE SOUL; 

clod that you see upon the streets are you not humble when you think 
of Christ? In this great balance of all things is it not a revelation 
to know that He whose lips could breathe no scorn for those who 
crucified Him revealed the possibilities of all? There could be no 
crucifixion, in reality, to one who was victorious over all things and 
worlds; and when in teaching His disciples the true Christ nature, 
He said: "Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect, "^ 
He knew what he commanded, the perfection being within the Soul 
which is given each to express. All are to be perfect men and women 
here; all are to be perfect in expression as Angels; all are to be ex- 
pressed as Messiahs from, out some central flame, the light of that sur- 
passing knowledge of the Messianic heavens; One day there will be 
summoned twelve, the group of Souls to which each belongs will be 
that number, and the Light Divine, which even Angels cannot see and 
Archangels can only perceive afar off, the Light of God's surpassing 
Love will be known; the name of each as a Messiah will be revealed; 
the truth will be known that it is not only possible, but the greatest 
joy of expression to be the Message bearer, the Christ of Perfect Love 
to darkened worlds. 

As there is the shadow before the light, so there is the typical 
Lucifer, the antichrist, the message bearer of darkness. We have na 
doubt that there is something upon which to found this theological 
idea or it would not be in existence. While you admire Christ and 
condemn Satan you do not know how high an Archangel must be the 
bearer of the message of sorrow and darkness. Let any one endeavor 
to take a message of sorrow to a friend: to a wife the message that a 
husband has suddenly been killed; you cannot do it, you try to get 
some one else to take it, one is chosen who is most wise and gentle: 
and if from among the Archangels one is summoned to be the back- 
ground for the Christ must not that one be wise? Although not to be 
envied, no Archangel would hesitate if called upon. So the fallen star; 
the typical Lucifer becomes the light-bearer by contrast. 

There is no doubt that there is always a shadow upon which the 
light is to shine. How wise and wonderful must be the Archangels 
chosen to bear the lesson of sorrow, of sin, of pain, of death unto the 
worlds! No weak ones are chosen as fitting representatives: they 
must be strong who can bear to stand and veil their archangelic light, 
who are willing to become a death, a sin, and a pain, and bear the 
blame of all the sins of mankind so that the Christ may be more visi- 
ble: as a dear friend might put forward one best beloved to receive a 
blessing, so all are willing to receive the Christ. All this is includ- 
ed in the divine plan; and no Soul can be in the state of an Archan- 
gel that is not willing to be the shadow as well as the light, the mes- 



ANGELS, ARCHANGELS AND MESSIAHS. 103 

senger of sorrow as well as of joy; who is not willing to minister to 
those in need of sorrow: for behold, it is only in human states that 
there is any sorrow or any earthly joy. 

The divinest light is that which comes in the highest attainment. 
Think you that Christ ever contemplated whether he was happy or 
not? Is not divinity in itself such a surpassing possession that one 
forgets whether there is to be happiness? There is such light that 
one does not care to question whether it is light. Only in the dimness 
of partial light does one wonder whether there is light or not, but when 
the sun shines fully upon the world and there is no shadow, one goes 
out into the glad day, drinking in its splendor and radiance; thus the 
Angels overcome the shadows of earth and dwell in the light that is- 
celestial. 

In each of these dispensations there have been twelve lesser lights 
corresponding to the apostles of Jesus, forming what has been named 
the *'Apostolic descent": the family of apostles or Angels in human 
life appointed to carry forward the line of light from one dispensation 
to another on the earth; under these circumstances only do angelic 
Souls become embodied on the earth again; i. e., to become apostles 
and disciples, in a certain innermost sense, of a dispensation; and 
to carry forward to the next dispensation the lines of light by direct 
spiritual succession on earth. 

The Sons of God, known as a sacred order in the Kabala, were not 
supposed to be Messiahs, that name being too sacred even for them to 
pronounce, but they were the sacred twelve who, under divine com- 
mission and appointment, carried forward upon the earth, as Angels 
do in heaven, a dispensation which has passed, until the new one shall 
appear. 

There have been successions of these twelve lives upon the earth 
since the advent of the latest Christ, as in the Orient there were 
twelve. In scripture they were referred to under the name Mel- 
chizedek. The Roman Catholic Church enfolds some in its keeping, 
others are scattered over the whole earth; they are known only by sa- 
cred symbols and signs that belong now to the spiritual kingdom and 
are only known by the twelve in the material world. It is a singular 
fact that there are perpetuated in the East, as well as in the Roman 
Catholic Church, the exact means by which the chosen know one an- 
other; if one of the Sons of God in the Roman Catholic Church 
should meet one of the same order from the Orient, they would know 
one another, not only by divine perception, but by the indications 
that are known to belong to the order. 

This sacred order can only have twelve at any one time on earth. 
While there have been many orders fashioned in imitation of this none 



104 THE SOUL 



could be real excepting tliat which has the light and life. The Sons 
of God belonging to the Christian dispensation unite the close of the 
Christian dispensation with the beginning of the new dispensation. . 
Other Sons of God will appear when the dispensation has reached its 
culmination: when the Messiah of this dispensation comes the Sons 
of God will be chosen. 

This being the dispensation of reunited lives, the sixth dispensa- 
tion will be twofold, as the central embodiment on earth will be two- 
fold, and will have recognition; the coming Messianic embodiment, 
which represents one half of all the Messiahs of earth, will be two- 
fold, and there will also be twofold representation in all the sacred 
offices belonging thereunto. 

The Angels and Archangels revealing themselves as heralds of 
this dispensation appear in dual perfection, revealing each portion of 
the Soul. In ancient time the Archangels appeared only as man, now 
the double life appears. One of the Archangels heralding the new 
dispensation is one whose feminine name is the synonym for- Delight; 
we will call her name Delecta, the masculine, Delecton. The feminine 
appears above the earth, she broods and hovers near those on earth 
who have knowledge of the new dispensation and her name is the 
symbol of Joy. So the Archangel appears whose name is the symbol 
of Peace*; the peace that conquers strife; and this is symbolized in the 
name that represents Harmony; Euphemia, Eupheon. The other 
Archangel typifying the absolute celestial state of the new dispensa- 
tion appears in the name of Celestia, the feminine name of love, and 
Celestion, the masculine name of wisdom. Unto whomsoever these 
revelations come that belong to the New Life, the Archangels, Angels 
and messengers appear in dual completeness, and each portion of the 
dual Souls are named. 

The "first fruits" of any Messianic period are those who have ri- 
pened unto dispensations, having had suitable time since their ap- 
proach to the earth for that dispensation. Each dispensation gathers 
a certain number of Souls; this, the sixth dispensation and the next the 
seventh, will gather as many as all the others; for those having been 
prepared under different dispensations, who were not quite ready, 
those who rejected Christ, are ready now; many not ready for the 
previous Messiahs are ripening now. Many from among all the na- 
tions of the earth hear the voice of the summoning Archangel of 
this dispensation, and are awake, alert, and aware. This is why 
the new ministrations encircle the globe. This is why there are 
those among all people who know and understand it, even though 
it is under a new name. When the Messiah shall have fully come; 
when the light shall be fully here, there will be six times as many 



ANGELS, ARCHANGELS AND MESSIAHS. 105 

ready for this light — it being the sixth dispensation — as at the dawn 
of any dispensation the earth has known, so the Messiah that ap- 
proaches the earth, mingles and blends the harmonies of all past 
dispensations in one. 

No preceding Messiah has mentioned other Messiahs excepting 
the one preceding Him; but in this dispensation all the previous 
Messiahs will be recognized, acknowledged, placed in their proper 
positions in history, and their missions to earth clearly understood; 
and the New Messiah will declare them and recognize them. As the 
day and hour draw near many hearts are quickened, many lives are 
touched, because there will be harmony; that which heretofore has 
been strife will be peace. 

The New Messiah will explain all things; interpret all law, bid 
all sounds of warfare to cease, and will even make science a clearer 
pathway, and the daily thought of man more and more perfect and 
exalted. The children of earth will then perceive the light more than 
at any other period of human history, and will know the spirit of the 
divine life. No more, when this dispensation is fully come, can the 
world walk in shadow as in the past ages of darkness, for the majority 
will turn toward the light, earth's children will have passed the shad- 
ow, they will have turned to the spiritual state: that which has here- 
tofore been lived and viewed wholly with reference to the senses, that 
which man has mistaken for conquest and victory will have passed 
away; man will see that the only true victory is over self; crime and 
injustice will be the exception instead of the rule as in past time; vio- 
lence will be almost unheard of, thougjh there will be the ebbino-s of 
the tide, as between all dispensations; but the ebb tide will be higher 
than the flood tide of the first dispensation. 

Only the Angels know that the Christ has come unto the heavens 
of the earth; but spirits know that the light is here, that the new life 
is being manifest, though they do not know from what rare and won- 
derful source of light it appears. The new Messiah will receive great- 
er recognition than any previous Messiah: after this dispensation has 
fully come no more Christs will be crucified; no more prophets will be 
put to death; martyrdom for truth's sake will not be known, for the 
earth will have passed the great half-cycle of all the cycles. Matter 
has eclipsed the Soul, and the earth has ever seemed to scorn her Mes- 
siahs; but spirit will more and more prevail. 

Bright and wonderful as is this picture; great as must be that 
light that approaches the earth that has overcome worlds and suns, 
there is no Soul, of which you are now the feeble expressions, but what 
will one day in the vast spheres of eternal life, also be approaching 
some world, some planet as benighted as this, with great and wonder- 



106 THE SOUL; 

ful power, with the light of all this knowledge upon yon. Perhaps ar 
glimmering of this present time Avill sweep across your Souls when as 
a Messiah you approach some world; when you will say like Christ, 
even when put to death in the defense of the truth that you bring, 
"Father forgive them for they know not what they do." And this is 
the beginning, the stepping stone, one portion of that immortal path- 
way by which all Souls who have expression in time shall also have 
expression as the greatest benefactors. None so feeble, none so life- 
less today, but what in the great cycles of eternity they may approach 
some planet, shadowed as is the earth, with quivering pinions and the 
light of Love Divine, giving forebodings of a Messianic dawn. 

Thus do you perceive the order of the Soul's expressions. Angels 
ministering to those who are following after them in experience, 
Archangels to successions of planets beneath them, Messiahs to all 
the worlds of a given system through which they have passed, having 
been spirits. Angels, and Archangels in each (or a similar) system. 
In this light you will understand what it means when the Sons of God 
are named, or set apart in these teachings as an especial order of be- 
ings; why it is that the Sons of God under the names of Avatars, 
Buddhas, Christs, as Messiahs shine out more brightly as time passes 
on, and all are more perfectly recognized as the races advance to their 
height. These Sons of God, like the crucified Christ say: "I have 
overcome the worlds." They abide in the perfect whiteness of the 
consciousness of God's Love and Presence. This is what is meant by 
the final return to the Father's house. C'Out from that kingdom of life 
and light Souls are sent forth, in the divided form of Cherubim and 
Seraphim, for successions of experiences, and they never come again 
into that absolute and divine Presence, called the Throne of God, until 
they have been Messiahs and return as Sons of God. \ All expression^ 
the whole line of being is to that end. 

What other seons, or ages, or cycles, may hold for Souls; what 
beginnings may be made and perfections attained you may not now 
conceive, not the loftiest mind or Soul on earth can dare to dream. 
If Messiahs constitute the highest perfection of the inter-solar heav- 
ens what can be the perfections in other series of worlds whose sys- 
tems you do not even know are in existence, whose suns will never 
have a name to you upon this planet, and whose light you cannot 
perceive save in that dim fathomless space where, like meteors, the 
largest suns flash and shine! If in the feebleness of the human 
senses man tries to grasp these divine possibilities let him remem- 
ber how simple it is, how easy it is for the Soul to recall these 
divine possessions; and, because the Soul can recall them so easi- 



ANGELS, ARCHANGELS AND MESSIAHS. 107 

ly, you may readily understand that no life can be wholly value- 
less when every life shall culminate in a Messiah. 

^It is well to beware of fictitious heights of self-exaltation and 
vainglory. So imminent is this New Life, so is the spiritual atmos- 
here of your earth and ?ieavens pervaded by it, so impending is it in 
the spiritual and angelic heavens, that if one only has a glimpse of its 
surpassing light he would almost think he had attained it. Those 
who are easily exalted, who under the influence and stimulus of the 
New Life feel that they already possess it, may be excused for mak- 
ing mistakes in the direction of that exaltation. 

As there were "Christs many and Lords many" in the olden time 
so, even today, there are many self-appointed christs; but the real 
Christ may not even be known nor recognized when that Christ ap- 
pears; so different is perfection from imperfection, for: "the light 
shineth in the darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not. " So 
when Christ came there were premonitions and warnings; but only 
the "wise men" knew that He was there. These "wise men" were 
from the previous dispensation, were in the direct line of succes- 
sion, and recognized by their spiritual discernment the Christ in 
Bethlehem. 

The Five pointed Star was the symbol of that Messiah. Each 
point bearing a typical number and name, five being the number of 
that dispensation. The Six pointed Star is the symbol of the New 
Light and includes all the dispensations that have passed. So 
Egypt, and all of the Orient, all nations in the past yield up their 
treasures, for the earth is making ready for the New Messiah; the chil- 
dren of God are being made aware. Those who are ready to ripen 
under the new dispensation are having fine raiment of the spirit, 
woven from within the Soul; with each successive embodiment, they 
better express the life and light that tend toward it. 

As years before Christ was born the women of Israel turned 
prophetically toward that light wondering where, and how, and to 
whom the Messiah would come, so, even now, upon the earth, hearts 
turn expectantly toward the dawn; many mothers under the stimulus 
of the New Light that is here think that the Christ has already come; 
and so, in one sense, the Christ of Love is here; for whenever a 
child is born under the influence of such light and glory there is 
promise of the real Messiah. 

Now you are approaching this light, as the dawn is here in its 
glimmerings and glory, your lives are more and more impressed. 
As upon the mountain tops there are those who see the day more fully, 
in the valley are those who see it dimly or not at all, so, strain your 
eyes heavenward as you will, you cannot enter that atmosphere nor 



108 THE SOUL. 

perceive that glory one moment in advance of your actual growth and 
unfoldment: but the Messiah can no more be put aside, nor the ap- 
proach be denied, than can the royal chariot of the sun be set aside 
Avlien it is time for the day. None can hasten, none can delay the 
day and hour: happy are they who upon the mountain heights per- 
ceive the dawn. 

"How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that 
bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace;" 

All hail the dawn of the new day; the reign of the New Messiah! 

All hail the Christ in every Soul; lowliest in all worlds, greatest 
in the kingdom of God! 



SEVENTH LESSON. 

EECAPITULATION. 

Having thus rather suggested than given to you the foregoing 
lessons, we think it desirable that the class shall remember the princi- 
pal points from the beginning. 

God is the Infinite, Omniscient, Omnipresent, Eternal, Immortal, 
Entity of the universe; revealed to man in all ages; under symbols, 
numbers, and names, which to the nations of the earth have revealed 
the meaning of God: whether Jehovah, Brahm, Allah, God or Lord, 
each term in its ultimate meaning is the same. 

Soul is an eternal, immortal, finite entity, uncreate; in essence like 
unto God; therefore all Souls have had and will have being forever. 

God and the Souls in the universe constitute all the consciousness 
of the universe. 

God is the Infiaiversej and the Universe is that which God 
expresses. 

As the Soul is finite that which is expressed by the Soul is finite. 
In the circle of finite expression the Soul bears the same relation that 
God does to the infinite expression, except that the laws governing the 
finite expression are forever under the guidance of the Infinite. 

There is never any change in the relationship between the Soul 
and God: the Soul is always finite, God always Infinite. In es- 
sence, the quality of the Soul is like the Deity yet no more can 
the Soul be God than the drop of water can be the ocean. This 
being clear, the Infinite includes the finite, but is not the finite; the 
Deity pervades, surrounds and controls, but is not the finite entity; 
nor is the finite entity God; nor are all Souls God, or parts of God, 
but "like unto God." When the mind has once established the 
correct idea concerning the relationship between the finite and the 
Infinite the thought can never wander from it. 

As the Soul is an eternal entity, is a unit from eternity, so, be- 
ing immortal, the Soul is not impelled from the Infinite, it is not a 



no THE SOUL: 

gift from the Infinite, does not return to tlie Infinite, is not lost in the 
Infinite. 

The Soul is always in the Infinite. 

The Soul does not depart from nor return to God: the state of 
being is always within God: the state of expression is called exist- 
ence, and seems to be a departure from the state of the Soul. 

There is never any change in the quality of the Soul; nothing 
can be added to or taken from that which is absolute; whatever the 
expressions are they are expressions whose sources are all within the 
Soul; i. e.: the impetus, the power, the light and knowledge is there. 
Expression differs from being as matter differs from Soul. 

God is manifested in the universe in Dual attributes: Father- 
Mother. God through expression manifests duality in all forms of 
the universe, and in revealed attributes. 

The name that in the Orient was known as the Mahadai, the God- 
Goddess, has everywhere appeared in modified form expressing the 
twofold nature of the Deity; but no one among the seers and prophets 
ever made the mistake of supposing that this twofold expression was 
other than one God in the Infinite, any more than that the three- 
fold expression as worshiped in Isis, Osiris and Horus; in Brahma, 
Yishnu and Siva; and in Father, Son and Holy Spirit, had other 
meaning than the threefold expression of the one Infinite, Eternal, 
Omniscient, and Omnipresent God. 

The Soul represents in the finite what the Deity does in the 
Infinite: the nature of the Soul is dual, and the approach toward 
expression of the Soul is dual. The first stage of expression is found 
symbolized in the "Cherubim and Seraphim": pictured as heads with 
wings of light and countenances illumined with celestial glory, but no 
material form. 

The first state toward expression from the absolute that is like 
God, is that of duality, as portrayed in the Cherub and Seraph, and is 
by a process that we name Involution^ which corresponds to and is the 
antithesis of Evolution, in matter. The states of involution previ- 
ous to mortal birth, or genesis, are not states to be remembered or ex- 
pressed, because they cannot be known until the return process which 
is after the expression in human or outward form; but there are 
Angels of succeeding lower degrees, beginning with the Archangels of 
the system, and then Angels of the planet on Avhich the Soul is to find 
expression, who take charge of this involution, as there are those who 
take charge of each life when involved. Thus by degrees the Soul 
approaches expression in the outward form: not suddenly from the 



RECAPITULA TION. 1 1 1 

Celestial to mortal life, not suddenly from the Soul to the body, 
but through stages of descent. 

The typical Garden of Eden was made the first expression in hu- 
man life, i. e.: the typical contact of the Soul with matter, Adam 
being the man of earth, and Eve being life; Eva the serpent, the 
senses surrounding, the human environment. 

The twofold or divided state in matter is simply the incident of 
expression* as matter causes the divided expression of that which is 
dual in essence, one in Soul, so when the Soul seeks expression in 
matter that expression must always be divided; there is not division 
in the Soul, in the absolute, but division in the expression of the Soul 
for the time that the expres&ion takes place; these expressions are al- 
ways man and woman, and the sexes are not interchangeable. 

The state of human expression is called an Emhodlment of 
which there are successions. Embodiments begin with the lowest 
planetary life ( adapted to human expression ) and with the stage that 
is lowest on the planet which the Soul approaches. Thus each Soul 
begins at the beginning of expression, l^o one ever graduated as a 
master mason first; there is the degree of "entered apprentice," the 
"fellow craftsman" then the "master mason": each Soul enters, as an 
apprentice in the earthly expression, the lowermost human state. 
This is the typical life of every Soul that is ever expressed on earth, 
and all must pass through the same states; upon each planet of a sys- 
tem, all possible phases of that planet's experiences; so there is no in- 
justice, no partiality, no different experience; that which one Soul 
requires to express in any one planet all Souls must express who ap- 
proach that planet for embodiment. 

The dual life finds expression in man and woman on earth, and is 
always man and woman; the feminine expressing the feminine, the 
masculine expressing the masculine; there is interchange and blending 
of experiences by one union on earth, and by the final reunion as the 
Angel; they make the journey of the Soul m its dual expressions 
through the earthly life, passing through similar states at the same 
time, but not together. 

There are three general degrees of expression, each of which in- 
cludes many embodiments. The typical Physical expression being the 
first stage; the typical Intellectual expression being the second stage; 
the typical Moral or Spiritual expression being the third stage. Inter- 
blending in the various conditions of human life as the unfoldment 
goes on, these stages are all modified to the culmination which must be 
comparatively separate; i. e.: the mere culmination of physical life 
never occurs if there is great intellectual attainment, and the culmina- 
tion of the mere intellectual attainment never occurs after there is any 



112 THE SOUL: 

great unfoldment of the spirit, because when pursuing physical attain- 
ment no other aim in life is of any value to the one seeking expres- 
sion in that manner. To a physical life typified in Hercules, who 
was indeed the representative of man's physical attainment, nothing 
could be great but physical power and strength. Man would be con- 
sidered unfortunate in that state of expression if seeking for moral 
propositions in the place of a strong right arm: so when nations, as 
Avell as individuals, are in the stage of physical culmination little else 
is thought of; but when, sometimes, as in certain states it is true, the 
physical is merged into the intellectual there is a plain echo of the 
physical state in the higher sports, like the ancient tournaments and 
amusements. 

The giant in intellect becomes as the gladiator; in the second 
stage, or degree, he is worshiped who has the greatest mind. This 
planet as a whole has not passed the intellectual culmination. Certain 
nations have so culminated, and have passed on to their ripening; 
groups of Souls have also; but the inhabitants of the planet, as a 
whole, are seeking the intellectual culmination. But the races who 
had beginning long aeons ago have passed on through the physical the 
intellectual, and the spiritual culminations, to the angelic state. The 
highest states of expression in individual lives upon the earth are 
typical of the spiritual state. Prophets and teachers afford lessons 
concerning the higher culminations; but the Messiahs are typical of 
the divinest culminations possible. 

Life thus becomes perfected by gradually achieving victory in 
these three conditions. The most complicated condition is the moral 
or spiritual; since that state oftenest seems devoid of the qualities 
most successful in other degrees, and since in a moral direction peo- 
ple often deceive themselves more than others. Hercules may ex- 
emplify his strength by conquering hundreds or thousands, or by 
overturning a temple; the intellectual giant can accomplish the feat 
of solving mathematical problems in one or five minutes, or hours; or. 
he may grasp the proposition of the creation of worlds and systems: 
but the man who is governed by moral force has often no way to de- 
monstrate to mankind the truths he espouses, and the truly moral na- 
ture must wait for the world to grow to its height. Because of this 
the world has put its prophets, and teachers, and seers, and Saviors,, 
to death. 

These moral culminations are the most subtle, because in the 
highest realm: they are the lessons of the ages: but in individual 
lives mistakes are often made, that sentiment is morality; that that 
which is esthetic is moral; that some particular kind of intellectual or 
artistic recognition is moral growth. All will do well to analyze 



BECAPITULA TION 1 1 .? 

most closely these states of mind in themselves, and they will not fail 
to discover that there is little to criticise in others when individual 
states are so uncertain. Then in tracing these moral culminations, you 
have to look not only for long periods of time, but for every complex 
state of temptation, struggle and testing, and all that the experience 
of life affords, in its many intricate and winding labyrinths : and then,, 
w^hen you learn the final lesson, not to judge, not to condemn, it is 
after all possible temptation has passed from the individual life into 
the perfection of that divine Charity that knows all. It is because- 
charity knows all human conditions that " charity suffereth long and 
is kind, vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up." 

Souls approach planets in groups. We wall explain the different 
conditions of expression. Some Souls may be in the beginnings of 
expression while others are ripening or culminating: this is because all 
Souls do not approach the planet at the same time. Souls come into 
expression in groups, each group beginning expression in a given cy- 
cle: those who have precedence here in point of time may have been, 
last in a previous expression in another solar system, so there is no 
partiality, that which seems so is in states where seeming partiality 
is possible: as time, and space, and the material senses; the conception 
is relative and is only in the limited view of man's mind. 

Man supposes that the human consciousness is limited by the 
human senses and faculties; this is true so far as the senses and. 
faculties govern, but the real consciousness is within the Soul. This 
we will illustrate: supposing the Soul to be represented by the sun 
which shines through the earthly atmosphere, it may be obscured 
and clouded by the mists of earth, but still all the light you have 
is from the sun, without it you would be in total darkness; so 
with the consciousness: that which you recognize is broken, refract- 
ed, and clouded by the earthly state, still you would have no con- 
sciousness were it not for the Soul; and however imperfect that 
may seem as compared to the Soul itself it is all the light you have.. 
The light comes from the Soul, the shadow from the earthly state. 
It is when the clouds of physical conditions are overcome by that 
light that the power of the Soul is expressed in matter. 

Whatever is physical in man is generic, organic, and governed by 
law; but that law is always subject to the higher power which is 
from the Soul. So whenever the Soul begins to express itself the la^ 
that is above the organic law becomes operative. The spiritual teach- 
ing of every age has been exactly the same: i. e., that over the physi- 
cal is the moral power; the physical law is to conquer for self, the 
moral power is to conquer 8elf; the spirit is that which conquers the 



114 THE SOUL: 

physical life; but until one enters the physical life there is no moral 
conquest, because there is no shadow. 

We would have you remember that these states of expression, 
or human embodiments as they are termed, are not in themselves 
entities, but the spirit of each embodiment is a breath from .the 
jSouI; and that which the Soul possesses is always its own, so, 
disencumbered of that which is merely for expression, the Soul still 
possesses all that it has given to matter, and all that matter can- 
not express; what that matter is, what the human mind is, what 
the personal state is accompanying the expression, are of no final 
importance. Just as adults do not wish to be children, in the sense 
that they were children before they became men and women, just 
as that state of childhood is merged into the state of adult exist- 
ence, so the final expression includes the preceding states and all 
expressions are merged in the Soul possession. The personality 
which is so much prized on earth is not lost, ( excepting the earthly 
part is cast aside) but is a portion of the larger individuality, the 
Soul entity. 

Thus in the vast range of experiences you become aware of what 
the Soul wishes to accomplish in its expression through matter: facil- 
ity over the conditions that pertain to matter; the conquest, con- 
sciously, over all earthly states, to the end that, as each state minis- 
ters to the state that is next lowest, all may minister unto others. 
So when expression in all embodiments has taken place, when the ex- 
perience of earth is done, when every vanquishment has been made, 
the greatest of which is the conquest of self, the Soul, because of 
having passed through all the culminations of all the embodiments 
of earth, is again united; and this is an Angel of the earth. The 
angelic states of earth constitute the harvest of what has been ac- 
complished in the earthly expression, and the angelic ministration 
is to those who are still in the wilderness of time; these states suc- 
ceed one another in height until they become allied to Souls in arch- 
angelic states who minister to the higher Angels, and who through 
them approach- the earth at unusual times. 

Eternity includes all planetary cycles of expression, and there are 
such intervals from expression to the absolute, the state of being, as 
constitute sufficient respite from all expression. Every Soul is in the . 
absolute state such cycles or aeons as intervene between angelic, arch- 
angelic, and Messianic states, and the commencement of a new series 
of embodiments on another system. Those are Angels who are per- 
fected on each planet, having conquered that world. The Soul in its 
reunited state as an Angel has expressed all possible degrees and 
therefore has charge over Souls that are still in the state of express 



RECAPITULATION. 115 

sion; when that charge is fulfilled after every planetary existence, the 
Soul passes on to another planet. 

If any one has endeavored to measure the periods or cycles of 
time in connection with earthly and planetary expression it would 
almost be fruitless; although it is possible to state in numbers the 
years included in the vast cycles that intervene between the com- 
mencement and close of expression on a planet, also the cycles 
that intervene between the planetary expressions, when the Soul 
is in a state of being instead of existence, also the seons that in- 
tervene between expressions in systems of planets; but those figures 
would convey no idea that the human mind could grasp, so vast would 
be the number. 

Those who are Archangels of lesser degree in the solar system 
are Angels from the planet Jupiter: the Jupiter referred to in an- 
cient symbolism as the central light of the gods; and as the gods 
were Archangels they had their beginnings, i. e., their home on 
that planet. Souls in the highest angelic state of Jupiter, there- 
fore, minister to the earth or any other planet within the radius of 
the orbit of Jupiter. Beyond the planet Jupiter Archangels are in- 
terstellar, and they have sufficient power to shape and mold some 
portion of the destinies of the planets of your system. The interstel- 
lar Archangels are those who announce the Messiahs, who are twelve 
in number. There are inter-solar Archangels from beyond your solar 
system, those who accompany the Messiahs; these are among the 
highest order of Archangels, and by them are chosen, from among 
the Archangels of your system, those who shall usher in and abide 
with a dispensation until its close. 

Souls approach planets in certain numbers in a given cycle. We 
have given the number twelve as the family of Souls: that being the 
typical generic number of the universe; that being the typical num- 
ber of planets in a system. In the companionship of Souls there are 
twelve families, one hundred and forty-four Souls, and in the larger 
groups one hundred and forty-four thousand kindred Souls. These 
come into a dispensation and are carried forward by a dispensation to- 
gether; another one hundred and forty-four thousand approach the 
earth after a certain cycle of time, succeeded by others, until the 
preparation for a dispensation is complete. 

The full number of Souls have approached the earth: all the 
Souls are upon the earth and within the heavens of your planet that 
ever will have expression here; so that all embodiments now are of 
Souls that have been embodied, some of them many times. The lower 
states are represented by the primitive states of nations now upon the 
earth; the higher states of expression now on earth offer sufficient 



116 THE SOUL: 

encouragement to those who are seeking to know what the ultimate 
will be. 

AH states of existence having been expressed; all victories hav- 
ing been attained, as illustrated in the different conditions of human 
life upon planets and in the different degrees of angelic and archan- 
gelic states, there is but one other expression within the possible 
range of man's comprehension, or even conception, and that only in 
some of its results: the order of Divine Lives that come to the earth 
as Messiahs. These are the Sons of God: those who have overcome 
worlds, as explained in the sixth regular lesson. These are Arch- 
angels of so high an order that their names could not be spoken on 
earth with any knowledge of their meaning. Messiahs approach the 
earth in cycles: these are denominated the twelve Messianic cycles, 
as there are twelve Messiahs for each solar system, i. e.: those who 
are Messiahs to each planet of a solar system. 

A dispensation is the entire result of a Messianic visitation, 
from the birth of a Messiah to the full culmination of all Souls 
(as Angels) who belong to that Messianic cycle; the harvest of a 
Messianic life. 

The Messiahs are a prophecy for all: the state illustrating the 
last and greatest victory over all expression in matter; the entire for- 
getfulness of self: the perfect recognition of the divine entity in each 
Soul, and the Infinite entity, God. 

Of the twelve dispensations that the earth shall know, five have 
already transpired, the sixth now approaches. Its close will complete 
one half of all the Messianic periods of earth; therefore its culmina- 
tion will also be a culmination for the preceding dispensations; a 
restoration and a recognition of their places by the children of the 
l^ew Light. 

The Messianic expression of the New Dispensation will be in 
dual form, man and w^oman, typical of the perfect human state; sym- 
bol of the Divine Soul union. Both expressions will constitute the 
One Messiah and will have recognition in the New Life. In the 
Christian dispensation this is symbolized by the marriage of Christ 
and the Church, to which a superficial and very material interpreta- 
tion has been given by an uninspired clergy. This will be the 
reconciliation of man to God. (As God never is other than one with 
man, but man departs from God; i. e., from the perception of God.) 
The new dispensation brings the "peaceT' of which the dispensation 
of Jesus was but the prophecy. The people of the New Nation will 
cease to wage war, will not outrage the "image of God," and there- 
fore will not outrage God. All this is to come to the children of 



RECAPITULATION. 117 

the new dispensation when the New Messiah appears, and to all 
the nations of the earth' when all the Messiahs shall have come. 

Thus have we given you the outlines of this system to be com 
pleted as you pass on. Thus you have in the line of Impulsion from 
the Soul, Involution toward and into matter, the line of Embodiments 
toward each Culmination, and the line of final Culmination in the 
Angel, the solution of the entire problem of human life; and thus you 
have in the Angelic, Archangelic, and Messianic states, the suggestion 
of the state of Being, the Soul state: eternity. 

As in the material state you are accustomed to consider the 
source of all life the light of the sun and of the more distant sun of 
suns, so in the Celestial state, within the Infinite Love, guided by the 
Messianic Sun, heralded by Archangels, minstered to by Angels, all 
Souls move in their expression toward the appointed goal. 



VALEDICTOEY. 

As when the horticulturist has carefully prepared the soil and 
planted his seed he allows time for germination before he watches 
for the tender shoots, so we will ask you to allow these seeds of celes- 
tial truths to rest within your spirits until they have time to quicken 
into growth. Do not permit material shadows to retard, nor super- 
ficial reasoning to attempt to hasten, their germination. 

Not all at once can the mind grasp any truth, and never until 
there is preparation from within. 

We have given the thesis for you to accept or reject; rest assured 
that we neither ask you to accept it on our authority, nor will we 
seek to enforce it by argument. Truth, like mathematics, is its own 
demonstration, when the principles upon which it rests are known. 
Thinking without knowledge is of no value: when you are perplexed 
seek the source of knowledge, of perception, within the Soul; the 
mind grows clear when illumined from within. 

Endeavor to grasp the central truths and all small problems ad- 
just themselves easily to the center. If the mind revolves around any- 
thing less than the central truths we have enunciated, bewilderment 
and error will ensue. 

Bear in mind also that truth, as well as the perception of it, 
comes from Avithin; the presentation of truth to the mind is of no 
avail unless the Soul comes forth to meet it. 

If in doubt wait for growth; if perplexed wait for growth; and 
if in darkness wait for the light that cometh from the Soul. 

We have planted in perfect love; let the growth also be in love. 
Let the sunshine of your prosperity and the tears of your adversity 
fall upon the sacred garden of the spirit: we shall know by the 
fruitage of your lives, by your love, and truth, and goodness whether 
the germs have quickened unto the harvest of the Soul. 



